Meaning & use
re in a letter
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Meaning
phrasefixed phrase
A short way of writing 'about' or 'concerning' at the start of a letter or email, used to introduce the subject.
Grammar: Comes at the beginning of the subject line, often followed by a colon: Re: your order.
Patterns
- Re: something
- Re your letter
Re: Your application for the sales job — we would like to invite you to an interview.
I received an email with the subject line 'Re: Meeting on Friday'.
In a formal letter, you can write 'Re: Invoice 12345' to make it clear what the letter is about.
Common combinations
- Re: your email
- Re: your email of 5 May — thank you for your quick reply.
- Re: invoice
- The subject line said 'Re: Invoice 9876', so I knew it was about the payment.
- Re: application
- She wrote 'Re: application for the manager position' at the top of her cover letter.
- Re: meeting
- Re: meeting next Tuesday — can we change the time to 3 p.m.?
Synonyms and how they differ
- about
- About is the ordinary word for this meaning and is used in normal sentences, while re is a formal abbreviation used mainly in headings.
- concerning
- Concerning is more formal than about and can replace re in very formal writing, but it is not usually written before a colon.
- regarding
- Regarding means the same and is common in business letters, but it is a full word, not an abbreviation like re.
Commonly confused: re in a letter or are?
re in a letter vs are
Are is the verb, pronounced /ɑːr/ in British English and /ɑːr/ in American English, and it is not used at the start of a subject line. Re is a written abbreviation, not a verb.
Practice
Which sentence uses 're' correctly in a letter?
Choose one answer.
Re is used at the beginning of a subject line, usually with a colon, to mean 'about'. Option 1 follows this pattern. Option 2 uses re as a preposition in a normal sentence, which is not standard; option 3 uses re as a verb, which is wrong; option 4 uses re as a noun, which is also wrong.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “re in a letter”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.