La lettre formelle : une machine à formules fixes

Unité PE-06 · campagne 3 · des pièces fixes à assembler, pas à inventer.

Good news: the formal letter is the one exam genre you can largely pre-build. Its opening and closing are fixed social machinery — learned once, reused forever — and the register line of the grid pays you for assembling the parts correctly.

The fixed parts, in order:

1. L'objet — one verbless line stating the purpose: « Objet : contestation de la facture n° 2044-B ».
2. La formule d'appel — « Madame, Monsieur, » when you do not know your reader; « Madame la Directrice, » when you do. Never a name plus Salut, never Chère to a stranger.
3. The body: facts, request, consequence (trained in PE-07 to PE-09).
4. La formule de politesse — « Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées. » One iron rule: it repeats the appellation from your opening, word for word.
5. Just before it, the bridge line: « Dans l'attente de votre réponse, … » — politely announcing that you expect one.

Register is the exam here: one Salut, one exclamation mark of outrage, and the sociolinguistic points evaporate. The practice items drill the parts, their order, and the register traps between them.

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