For the detail oriented, I'm going to use a simple block-style letter as a baseline:

Letterhead/Sender's Address
Date
Recipient's Address
Salutation
Message
Closing
Signature

Now let's jazz it up a bit. The first place I usually work on is the letterhead. What letterhead, you may think? You see, back in the last century, people used to order expensive letterhead paper and then spend lots of time trying to make their documents line up with the print on that paper. With Buzzword, I'm going to suggest a new approach: put the letterhead in the document itself. It's really easy. Most small businesses have a black and white laser printer and that's perfect for what we are going to do here. If you have a color logo, then you will need a color laser printer to really make this work. Let me create two of them, one left justified and one right justified, and then you'll see where this is going.

In this example, I have just used the size and style of the fonts to create a professional looking letterhead like you might see with printed stationery. The next example is similar, but with the letterhead on the right side of the page rather than the left.

I am using the Myriad Pro font at 24 points for the name in the letterhead. This font does not have serifs (called sans-serif) and lends itself to a nice, clean look for a person or company name. The address information below is also Myriad Pro, but in a 9 point font. The typical business letter uses a font with serifs and point size of 10 to 12 points - Minion Pro or Adobe Garamond Pro are good choices here and Minion Pro is used in the example above. This deliberate use of fonts - with a sans-serif font for the letterhead and a font with serifs for the body of the letter creates an esthetically pleasing contrast.

I'm also not using the color black for the large text in the letterhead, I'm using a very dark grey - grey-15. I find that when a large, boldface font like this is printed in pure black it is a little too strong. By pulling back a couple of shades of gray, the contrast is reduced and it looks more professional. The image below shows the Buzzword text color drop-down menu in the fonts menu bar - you can see the color selected and the corresponding number.

Putting the letterhead in the document itself turns out to be a very powerful thing for a very simple reason. When your letterhead is on a physical piece of paper, you can't produce a business letter without printing it. That's all well and good if you are always around a printer. But more importantly, once you have printed it (and signed it), you have to scan it back in to get an electronic copy of the original document. And then you probably have to send it somewhere by FAX.

That means that I can't complete a business transaction unless I am near, minimally, a printer and FAX machine. So what are all those people sitting around Starbuck's doing? When you are at Starbucks, you should be able to complete an entire transaction without either a printer or a scanner. Putting the letterhead in the document is the first step because by doing so you are now liberated from needing pre-printed letterhead paper. Have you ever gone on a business trip and put 20 sheets of letterhead in an envelope to use in the hotel business center? There's no need for that anymore as your letters will now print on any printer with any paper. Even better, though, is using the Document —> Export... menu to save the letter in PDF format. Then you can send your letter via e-mail and not need a printer or FAX machine at all!

To help you get started, I've placed a copy of this letter here that you can use as a Buzzword template for your own purposes. Simply follow the link above to open the document. (If you don't already have an Acrobat.com account, you'll need to create one, but it's secure and more importantly, it's free.) Once you have the document open use the Document —> Save As... menu option to save a copy in your own account (you will be prompted to login if you are not already). You can then edit that document, change the letterhead text to that of your own company and use that as a standard template for your business letters.

I'll be blogging a bit more on business letters - stay tuned for posts on how to use headers and footers, creating a digital signature and other advanced topics. I'll show you how to create a PDF for a complete, signed business letter without ever having to print or scan it. With Acrobat.com, you can keep these important assets secure and maintain this capability anywhere you have internet access, as opposed to whenever you are near your home office or a retail business center.