Farewell Letter

Farewell Letter

Farewell Letter is a type of letter written for expressing goodwill during partings. Such partings can be related to retirement, relocation, resignation etc. These are addressed to co-workers, colleagues, senior officials, clients, friends, teachers and to those who are close and dear. If a person is leaving a job, he is supposed to write the letter to his colleagues, co-workers, boss and if a person is retiring, the management or co-workers write the letter to him. Though, Farewell Letters are mostly informal but depending on your relationship with the recipient, the letters will have certain formalness to it.

Most of the times when you write a farewell letter to your colleagues it will be informal and if the management is writing a farewell letter to you it will be a mix of formal and informal writing. Informal farewell letters have lots of liberties and you can be witty, sad, funny and/or grateful but in formal farewell letters you have to be straight and brief. This is the reason why different formats are utilised for writing farewell letters. One format caters to those with whom you have a personal relationship and another for those, with whom you have only professional relationship.

As you are leaving the office, your farewell letter has similitude to Announcement, Friendly, Official and Retirement letters. Many a times, farewell is mentioned in resignation letter serving a dual purpose. Farewell Letters have similarities to goodbye letters barring a one; a goodbye letter is sent to an employer by an employee. Apart from this dissimilarity Farewell Letters and Goodbye Letters are generally referred as one and the same. Another reference, with which the farewell letter is addressed, is the term ‘Exit Letter’ which is self explanatory.