Formal Opening, Friendly Closing: The German Letter Mistake That Costs Points

Here is a way to lose marks that feels deeply unfair the first time it happens: you write a German letter, the grammar is clean, every point in the task is covered — and you still get the paper back with marks missing. Not for a wrong case ending. For being too friendly in the last two words.

The letter opened with „Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,“ and signed off with „Liebe Grüße“. Neither phrase is wrong. Both are perfectly normal German. But together, in one letter, they are a mismatch — and in a written exam that mismatch is visible from across the room.

The greeting and the closing are one unit

German letter-writing works in registers: a formal one, a neutral one, and a private one. Each register has its own opening and its own sign-off, and they come as a matched pair. Choose your opening and you have, whether you meant to or not, already chosen your closing.

• Formal — „Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,“ (or „Sehr geehrte Frau Klein,“ / „Sehr geehrter Herr Klein,“) closes with „Mit freundlichen Grüßen“. Use it for authorities, companies, landlords, anyone you address as Sie and don't know personally. („Freundliche Grüße“ and „Mit besten Grüßen“ belong to the same register.)
• Neutral — „Hallo Frau Klein,“ closes with „Viele Grüße“. This is the everyday register of German working life: a colleague, a course teacher, someone you're on polite but relaxed terms with.
• Private — „Liebe Anna,“ closes with „Liebe Grüße“. Friends and family only.

Those three are the safe defaults, not the complete list. German keeps a whole shelf of closings — „Beste Grüße“, „Freundliche Grüße“, „Mit besten Grüßen“, „Herzliche Grüße“ — and they sit at various points on the same scale between the formal end and the private one. Learn one closing per register and you will never be wrong; the variants exist so that native writers can fine-tune the temperature.

Why the examiner cares so much about two words

Because at that point they aren't only marking your grammar — they're also marking whether you can produce the text type the task asked for. Written exams are assessed on more than one axis: how well you fulfil the task and produce the right kind of text, and, separately, how accurate your German is. Register lives on the first axis. That's why flawless sentences don't automatically rescue a mismatched sign-off: the two are scored in different columns.

It's worth seeing this the way a native reader does. „Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren“ is the German equivalent of putting on a suit. „Liebe Grüße“ is the equivalent of a hug goodbye. Do both in the same short letter and the reader notices — not as an error, exactly, but as the mark of someone who hasn't yet got the feel for the situation. That feel is precisely what the task is testing.

Two small rules that catch people out

Both of these are invisible until someone points them out, and both show up in exam letters constantly.

1. No comma after the Grußformel. It's „Mit freundlichen Grüßen“ and then your name on the next line — no punctuation at the end. English trains your hand to write Kind regards, with a comma; German doesn't take one.
2. After the Anrede comma, the next line starts lowercase. The Anrede ends with a comma, not a full stop, and the sentence continues underneath — so it begins with a small letter, unless the first word is one that's capitalised anyway: a noun, a name, or the polite Sie / Ihr. (Ending the Anrede with an exclamation mark — „Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren!“ — is the older variant, and after it the next line does start with a capital. The comma is the modern default.)

So a correct formal opening looks like this, with the second line deliberately starting small:

• „Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,“
• „ich schreibe Ihnen wegen meiner Wohnung in der Bahnhofstraße.“

Note the lowercase ich — correct, and one of the clearest signals that a candidate knows how German letters actually work. (Capitalised Ihnen on the same line is also correct: the polite forms keep their capital everywhere.)

Which level does this actually matter at?

All of them — it just gets more expensive as you go up.

• A1 (Start Deutsch 1) — the short message task wants an Anrede and a Gruß to be there at all, and wants you to stay consistent with du or Sie. Most A1 tasks live in the private row, so „Liebe Anna,“ → „Liebe Grüße“ covers you.
• A2 — semi-formal and formal situations start appearing (a note to a course office, a message to a landlord), so the formal row becomes live and a mismatch has somewhere to show up.
• B1 — a formal letter or email is standard, and how well you produce that text type is squarely part of what's assessed.

So this isn't a B1 refinement you can postpone. It's a habit worth building at A1, when there are only two phrases to remember.

One grammar detail hiding in the sign-off

„Mit freundlichen Grüßen“ is a small dative lesson you can carry around in your pocket. Mit always takes the dative; the plural die Grüße becomes den Grüßen in the dative, and the adjective follows with -en. That's where the n on both words comes from. Compare the other two, which have no preposition and stay in the plain plural form: „Viele Grüße“, „Liebe Grüße“.

The takeaway

Before you write a single sentence of the body, decide who you're writing to and pick the row: formal, neutral or private. Write the opening and the closing first, as a pair, then fill in the middle. It takes five seconds and it removes an entire category of lost marks — the kind that has nothing to do with how good your German is.

Want to practise this on real exam-style writing tasks and get feedback on register, not just grammar? Start here: