How do you address a military officer when sending them an email?

Question

Do you abbreviate Captain or Lieutenant, etc? Do you use Dear (such as "Dear Captain Jones"? Or, do you just say "Sir or Ma'am?

I'm in the military so I ask from a military perspective.

Please advise

Answer 1

Using the same terminology as you would face-to-face would always be acceptable.

.

GB

Major, Squadron Commander, 42nd Bomb Wing, 2nd Air Force, Strategic Air Command (SAC), US Air Force, 1960-74

Answer 2

You can abbreviate their rank and use their last name. Keep it simple, straight-forward and to the point without any fluff. You also might get with a sharp admin troop in your unit to teach you some of these things as they will come in handy to move up in rank down the road. So many individuals who serve in the military learn to do their jobs well but their job duties really maybe don't include learning things like this until they take some professional military education classes (PME). Oftentimes they are not slotted for those until after a few years or more of serving but yet really need to learn some things like what you are asking about before then as well as how to present and carry themselves in a formal way when that is required or called for.

Answer 3

If you are a superior officer, you address them in the email as their rank (abbreviated) followed by their last name, i.e. CPT Jefferson. If you are enlisted or a subordinate officer, you address them as Sir in an email. No need to type anything before Sir, although I have seen emails that state the greeting of the day, such as Good Morning Sir. If you are emailing multiple superior officers, use the term Gentlemen or Ladies.

Answer 4

For EMAILS,

the general practice is Sir or Ma'am if they are a superior. You don't need to put "Dear" in an email. For multiple officers, you can say "Gentlemen" or "All". Although "Ladies and Gentlemen" would be grammatically correct, I've never seen it used for an email.



A superior addressing an subordinate could use abbreviated rank and name or just put the body of the email. I've even seen General officers use a first name to emphasize it was informal. Each service has its own abbreviation style for ranks.

Army: CPT

Navy: CAPT

Marines: Capt



Example:

Sir,

I spoke to you last week and am following up with this email...



or

Gentlemen,

The time for the weekly briefing has been changed to 1400 on THU.

Answer 5

If you are in the military, you should know that every service has some sort of guidance on this. For the Air Force, it is the Tongue and Quill.

Follow the guidance in your service's equivalent document.

Answer 6

If you are writing a formal military letter you do not use "dear." If you are a civilian writing to them you can get away with pretty much any greeting.

Answer 7

I was in the army in WW II, so I just looked up the army manual on this. The salutation starts with "Dear," followed by rank and surname. So, your example of "Dear Captain Jones" is correct.

Answer 8

If you were in the military you would know just how much BS your question actually is. No one in the military believes things are the same between branches and would never say "I'm in the military". They would start the question by indicating which branch of the military.



Also, that is what the chain of command is for...