The inside address in a business letter is the recipient's full contact information, printed on the page itself, not just on the envelope. It sits below the date, above the salutation, and it does quiet work: it tells the reader the letter was written specifically for them, and it creates a record that stays with the document once the envelope is discarded.
Most writers dash off the inside address without thinking, then wonder later why their letter looks slightly off. The problems are usually small. Wrong order. A title on the wrong line. A missing department. Each one is easy to fix once you know the rule.
What goes in the inside address, and in what order
The inside address follows a fixed sequence. Write it this way:
- Recipient's full name, with courtesy title (Mr, Ms, Dr, etc.)
- Job title or position (on a separate line)
- Department, if relevant
- Organisation name
- Street address or PO Box
- City, state or county, postcode
- Country (for international letters only)
Each element gets its own line. Don't stack the name and title on a single line to save space. A job title that runs too long for one line wraps to the next, left-aligned, with no extra indent.
How to handle the recipient's name
Use the full name. "J. Smith" is acceptable only when you genuinely don't know the first name. If you know it, write it: "Ms Janet Smith" or "Dr Marcus Okonkwo." Guessing a courtesy title is worse than omitting it, so leave the title off when you're unsure of gender or preferred form. "Janet Smith" on its own is perfectly correct.
When the letter goes to a job title and no named individual, use the title alone on the first line: "Head of Procurement." This is common in tender submissions and first-contact letters. It's also acceptable to combine both: write the name first, then the title on the line below.
If you're unsure whether to direct the letter to a named person or a department, a named person is almost always the better choice. The attention line gives you a second way to route the document when the addressee is unclear, but it supplements the inside address rather than replacing it.
Organisation name and address lines
Write the organisation name exactly as the organisation writes it. "PricewaterhouseCoopers" not "Price Waterhouse Coopers." "NSW Department of Planning" not "the Department of Planning NSW." Matching the official form isn't pedantry: it's accuracy, and it matters when the letter becomes a legal or commercial record.
Street addresses follow the same logic as a mailing envelope. House or building number first, then street name, then any suite or floor number. Abbreviations are acceptable for common terms (St, Ave, Blvd) but keep them consistent within the document. For Australian addresses, the state abbreviation and postcode sit on the same line as the city: "Melbourne VIC 3000." For UK addresses, the postcode gets its own final line. For US addresses, the two-letter state abbreviation and ZIP code share a line with the city.
Country goes last, in full, on its own line, and only when the letter crosses borders. Omit it for domestic correspondence. This ties directly to how you format the date line: an international letter should carry a date that's unambiguous to both sender and recipient, so spell out the month rather than using all-numeric format.
Spacing and placement on the page
In a fully blocked layout (the most common format in modern business correspondence), the inside address starts at the left margin. No indent. Every line begins flush left.
Leave one blank line between the date and the inside address. Leave one blank line between the inside address and the salutation. Some house styles use two blank lines in each gap for a more open look, which is fine, but pick one and apply it throughout the document.
The inside address is single-spaced internally. Don't add extra space between the name and the job title, or between the street and the city. The block reads as a unit.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
Putting the job title before the name is the most frequent error. The name always comes first. The title describes the person; it doesn't replace them.
Using a comma between the city and the state abbreviation is correct in US addresses ("Chicago, IL 60601") but not in Australian or UK formats. Don't let one country's convention drift into another.
Padding the address with titles the recipient doesn't use is another problem. If someone signs their emails "Chris Hadley" with no title, don't invent one for the inside address. Write "Chris Hadley" and move on.
Finally, check that the inside address matches what's on the envelope. Discrepancies between the two undermine the professional impression the letter is meant to create. The full business letter format covers how all these components fit together, which is worth reviewing before you print.
A note on digital documents
When a business letter is sent as a PDF rather than a printed page, the inside address still belongs in the document. It stays where it would on a printed letter. The convention exists because letters get forwarded, filed, and detached from their context. The inside address keeps the document self-identifying, whether it's stored on a server or printed off a month later by someone who never saw the original email.
The Australian Government Style Manual treats the inside address as a standard component of formal correspondence, which reflects the broader professional consensus across English-speaking markets.