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Every letter should be dated.

Standard business practice is to leave a double-spaced gap after the recipient’s full address and then put the date directly below the address on the left-hand side of the page.

There are many correct ways to date a letter but the most common in business practice is to put the date in figures and then to write the month in letters with no extra punctuation. In other words, like this:

14 February 2003

Using figures only, i.e. 14/02/03, is perfectly valid but tends to look as if the letter has come straight out of a computer print-out and is rather inelegant. Adding ‘st’, ‘th’ or other such abbreviations after the number does not look very professional.

Adding ‘st’,‘th’ or other abbreviations after a date – ‘1st’ or ‘4th’ – never looks professional.

Personal correspondence is much more flexible. Using the same example, many people would write:

14th February, 2003

Note the addition of the ‘th’ after 14 and the comma after February, both of which make the date appear a bit more personalised and also traditional. Even in personal correspondence, however, it is probably a good idea to add the year.