The sender's address in a business letter is the first piece of information a reader processes, yet writers treat it as an afterthought. Get it wrong and you've introduced friction before the reader has read a sentence. Get it right and the rest of the letter carries more authority.
Where the sender's address goes
In a standard block-format business letter, the sender's address sits flush left at the top of the page, above the date line. In modified block format, it shifts to the right-hand side of the page, also above the date. Both placements are correct. The key is consistency: don't mix left-aligned body text with a centred sender block.
The sender's address does not include the sender's name. That belongs at the bottom of the letter, beneath the signature. Putting your name at the top of the address block is one of the most common formatting errors in business correspondence. Your name appears once: at the end.
What to include in the sender's address
A complete sender's address contains four elements, each on its own line:
- Street number and street name (with suite or floor number on the same line, or the line below)
- City and state or region
- Postcode or ZIP code
- Country (for international correspondence only)
A typical domestic sender's address looks like this:
47 Wellington Street, Suite 3
Melbourne VIC 3000
For a letter going overseas, add the country on a final line in uppercase:
47 Wellington Street, Suite 3
Melbourne VIC 3000
AUSTRALIA
Keep the country in uppercase because it helps postal sorting systems read the letter quickly. That rule comes from Universal Postal Union addressing standards, which most national postal services follow.
What to leave out
Don't include a phone number, email address, or website URL in the sender's address block. Those belong in a letterhead header or a footer, not in the address itself. The address block has one job: to tell the reader where you can be reached by post.
Also leave out any job title or department name. Those details belong under your signature, where the reader expects to find context about who you are within the organisation.
Letterhead and the sender's address
If your letter uses a pre-printed or digital letterhead, the sender's address is almost certainly already there. In that case, you don't write it again at the top of the letter body. Start directly with the date line, flush left.
Writers who use letterhead and still type out a sender's address block create a cluttered, unprofessional header with the information doubled up. Pick one or the other.
This also matters when you're writing on plain paper on behalf of an organisation. If no letterhead exists, the full sender's address goes at the top. If letterhead exists, trust it to do its job. For more on getting the overall letter format right from the first line to the last, see our guide to proper business letter format.
Sender's address punctuation
Older style guides placed a comma at the end of each address line and a period after the last. Modern business writing drops both. Each line ends clean, with no trailing punctuation. The line break does the separating work that punctuation used to do.
Abbreviations are acceptable. "St" for Street, "Ave" for Avenue, "Blvd" for Boulevard. State and territory abbreviations follow whichever standard your country uses. In the United States, the USPS two-letter abbreviations are standard for state names (CA, NY, TX). In Australia, use the standard postal abbreviations: VIC, NSW, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, ACT, NT.
The date line directly follows
After the sender's address, leave one blank line and then write the date. The date line and sender's address work as a unit at the top of the letter. Writing the date in the wrong format here is a common slip, especially in international correspondence. Whether you write "30 September 2026" or "September 30, 2026" depends on your audience's country, not your personal preference.
The inside address follows after another blank line, giving you the recipient's details. Writers sometimes confuse the sender's address with the inside address, which belongs below the date and carries the recipient's name, title, organisation, and mailing address. They serve different purposes and sit in different positions on the page.
When a PO box is all you have
Some organisations receive post at a PO box rather than a street address. That's fine. Write "PO Box 447" on the first line, then city, state, and postcode on the second. Don't write a street address you don't actually use just to look more substantial. Readers who write back will expect their reply to reach you.
One edge case: if your organisation uses a third party to receive mail on its behalf, the sender's address still shows your organisation's address, not the intermediary's. The "care of" notation handles that routing separately and only appears in the recipient's address block, not your own.
A quick format check
Before you send any business letter, run through four questions about your sender's address. First: is it at the top of the letter, above the date? Second: does it contain only the postal address, with no name, phone, or email? Third: does it match the actual address your organisation uses for correspondence? Fourth: if you're sending internationally, is the country name on the final line in uppercase?
Four checks. Thirty seconds. It's the kind of detail that quietly tells a reader whether the rest of the letter is worth their time.