Juan:'Peter, I have to write an email. It's the first time I've had to write an email for work. Could you help me with some doubts I have?'
Peter:'No problem, what do you want to know?'
Juan:'What's the difference between Dear Sir/Madam and Dear Mr Smith?'
Peter: 'Well, we start an email with both, 'Dear Sir/Madam' is when you haven't had any contact with the person before and 'Dear Mr...' (or 'Dear Mrs...' etc...) is when you have. Both are very formal.'
Juan:'OK. And when do you finish an email with yours faithfully and yours sincerely?'
Peter:'Normally, 'yours faithfully' is used with 'Dear Sir/Madam' and 'yours sincerely' with 'Dear Mr'.'
Juan:'And with titles of people, I suppose Mr is for a man, Mrs is for a married woman. But I've also seen, Miss and another one, Ms. What's the difference between these two?'
Peter:''Miss' is for an unmarried woman. 'Ms' is used when you don't know if she's married or not.'
Juan:'I have another question. When I tell people my email address, I don't know how to say the symbols. It's really difficult when somebody tells me theirs. Normally, I have to ask them to write it down.'
Peter:'Well, mine is email@example.com. You say it like this Peter Full Stop Jacks Underscore red At gmail Dot com. Remember that when the '.' is before the '@' you always say full stop and when it is after the '@', it's always dot.'