Writing

• Keep it simple. Say what you have to say as concisely as possible. Focus on one or two stories instead of trying to communicate a lot of ideas or events. Personal stories/testimonies are excellent.
• Remember your audience — What do they want to hear? Are the majority of your readers Christians or not? Are you using Christian jargon that unbelievers won’t understand?
• Use specific names of people but do not use individuals’ last names or photos without permission: 
  Ex: “I shared the gospel with Steve” vs. “I shared the gospel with a student”

Make your letter look easy to read.

• Don’t let paragraphs get too long and double-space between paragraphs. This makes it easier to read.
• Putting text in different columns and using headings of a larger font will help break up the text. 
• Leave white space on the page; don’t cram it to the brim. 
• Putting text on colored backgrounds (even white on black) is harder to read, so use this sparingly.

Clean is better than busy.

• Black text on white background with nice headings and color images is great! Getting too much more complex often looks messy.
• Stick to 1 or 2 fonts for the entire letter. Switching between different font colors and styles looks cluttered. Calibri, Candara and Gill Sans MT are all nice font options.

Use high-resolution, color photos.

• Many people are visually-oriented, so your photos will draw them into reading the letter. People often look at photos and read captions and headlines before reading the main text.
• In the age of Facebook, it is easy to download photos from online sources, but this is usually not a good method for getting photos for prayer letters. Most Facebook photos are only 50-60 KB because it compresses them so they take up less space. Instead of downloading these images, ask your friends to send you the original photos that they have on their computer. 

Get input from someone else.

• Perhaps you have a spouse or friend who is a strong writer. Ask them to proofread your letter before printing and mailing it. This will help ensure that your readers are not turned off by poor writing or errors in grammar and spelling.
• Perhaps you have a friend who has an eye for design. Ask them to look over your letter and give you feedback on the design. 
• Finally, feel free to ask Reliant for feedback!

If sending electronic letters…

• Send PDFs (not Word or other documents). Word documents open differently from computer to computer, throwing things out of alignment. PDFs open the same way for everyone. Word allows you to save as a PDF.
• You can also use an email service like MailChimp.

Miscellaneous

• Use! Exclamation! Points! Sparingly!
• Try to begin sentences with different words. Avoid beginning one sentence after another with the word “I.”
• Only capitalize words that are proper nouns (specific, specialized names). Do not capitalize words like gospel, godly, evangelical, conference, apostles, cross, baptism, etc.
• Follow the guidelines on Reliant Identity.
• Always include your name, address and phone number somewhere on your letter for people to contact you