Look at any printed prose text, and you will notice that the text content is divided into sections. Each one of these sections of text is called a paragraph. Every form of prose composition is broken up into paragraphs to make them easily readable.

The body of the letter
The style in which the body of the letter is written depends upon the kind of letter you are writing. The style or tone of a personal letter will be quite different from that of a business letter. The following hints, nevertheless, apply to letters of all kinds.

Every educated person should know how to write a good letter. All of us have to write letters of some sorts at some point of time.

Rule 7

‘dis’ and ‘mis’

Never double the ‘s’ of these prefixes. When a second ‘s’ occurs, it is the first letter of the next syllable.

So we have

Dismiss (NOT Dissmiss)
Misplace (NOT Missplace)

BUT

Rule 2

Short monosyllables always double their final consonant.

Shop, shopping (NOT shoping)
Let, letting (NOT leting)

Rule 3

‘ie’ and ‘ei’

The general rule is to put ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’.

Examples are:

English is said to have one of the most difficult spelling systems in the world. There are several reasons for this. 1) The pronunciation of many words has changed over the years, but not their spellings. For example, the ‘k’ in ‘knife’ and ‘gh’ in ‘right’ were pronounced during the Middle English Period (12th to 15th century). 2) Vowels have also changed their pronunciation over the years. 3) The spellings of many words have changed but not their pronunciation. For instance, the word ‘doubt’ used to be pronounced as ‘doute’. The ‘b’ was later inserted because the word had its origin in the Latin word ‘dubitare’ which had ‘b’ in it.

A paragraph is the smallest unit of prose composition. It consists of a group of closely related sentences.

Paragraph writing tips

A paragraph should be neither too short nor too long. Avoid writing excessively long paragraphs that run into several pages. Also avoid the practice of writing paragraphs consisting of a single sentence.

Capital letters are used:
1.    At the beginning of a sentence –

Alice is a good girl.
He is a clever boy.
She is very efficient.
They are coming.

2.    At the beginning of each line of poetry –
I am a teapot
Fat and Stout.
This is my handle,
And this is pout.

An abbreviation is a word or phrase written out in a brief way using only the letters of the alphabet and possibly full stops. In modern British English, abbreviations are written without full stops. Full stops (periods) are common in American English.

Examples are given below:

Dr for Doctor (US Dr.)