How to Format a Letter to Your Future Self

Format a letter to your future self with a short title, the date you wrote it, a greeting, focused paragraphs, and a closing. Add enough context to make people, places, and references understandable years later. The layout below gives you a practical reading order without turning your letter into a form. If you use Sealday, read the formatting limitation before pasting in your finished text.

Give the letter a title you can recognize later

Choose a brief, descriptive title that identifies the moment: a season, a life stage, or an ordinary setting. A title such as ‘An evening in my first apartment’ tells you more than ‘Important letter.’ Keep spaces between words. In Sealday, the Title field is separate from the Message field, so you can leave it out of the message. Avoid putting sensitive details in a title you may see while browsing your capsules.

Put the writing date near the top

Record the date you actually wrote the letter. Spell out the month and include the year so the date is clear across countries. If you revise an older draft, label the revision date separately. You can also record the intended opening date, but label it separately. In Sealday, typing a date into the message does not set the capsule’s opening date; select that in the date step. Add a broad location if it helps explain the scene, without including a private street address.

Choose a reading order before adjusting the appearance

Start with a greeting, establish where you are in life, move through the main subjects, and finish with a closing. The table gives each part a place; you can combine parts when the letter is short. For a longer letter, add brief section labels where the subject changes. Keep those labels descriptive, such as ‘Work right now’ or ‘What I hope you remember.’ You do not need a heading for every paragraph, and you can leave them out of a short letter.

Keep each paragraph focused on one subject

Start a new paragraph when you change the subject, move to a different time, or address a different question. The National Archives’ plain-language guidance recommends short paragraphs built around one idea. Let paragraph lengths vary. A memory may need several sentences; a final wish may need just one. During revision, look for paragraphs that contain several unrelated points and separate them at the natural turn. Read the transitions aloud to check that the letter still sounds like you.

Explain references where they first appear

Introduce a person by their relationship to you, explain an unfamiliar abbreviation once, and identify the event behind phrases such as ‘after everything happened.’ You can keep nicknames and private jokes; give yourself a small clue to their meaning. Replace vague time references with a season, year, or named occasion when the timing matters. If you mention an attached photo or recording, describe it in the sentence so the reference remains understandable even when the attachment is not immediately beside the text.

Use a simple layout in your saved document

In a document editor, use left-aligned text, a readable body font, and consistent spacing between paragraphs. Let text wrap naturally instead of pressing Enter at the end of every visible line. Avoid using repeated spaces to create columns or align a signature: that arrangement depends on the width of the page. Keep decorative fonts and elaborate headings out of the body if they make reading harder. Check the text size on your intended reading device at a comfortable viewing distance.

Use Sealday’s Title and Message fields as plain text

Sealday provides a separate Title field and a single Message field, followed by the opening-date and sealing steps. It does not provide controls for choosing fonts, applying bold or italics, or creating formatted headings. Put your greeting, context, body, and closing in Message; use ordinary words and punctuation to mark changes of subject. A document’s appearance will not transfer as a designed page when you paste its text. If you want to bring in text from a Word document or PDF, copy the text into Message rather than expecting a document-import tool.

Account for the current paragraph-display limitation

Sealday’s opened-letter view currently displays line breaks and blank lines as continuous text. The words remain, but the spacing you entered does not appear as separate paragraphs. This matters especially for poetry, lists, and letters whose meaning depends on line placement. Short labels followed by colons can help identify sections when spacing disappears, though they will not restore the layout. If exact line breaks are essential, keep the formatted document separately and use the app for a version that remains understandable as continuous prose.

Save the finished draft separately before sealing

Prepare a long letter in an editor where you can save it, then paste the finished version into Sealday. An unsealed draft can be lost when you leave the creation screen or when the app’s Premium status changes, so keep your own copy before switching screens. For irreplaceable writing, retain copies in separate places. The Library of Congress recommends descriptive filenames, multiple copies in different locations, and periodic checks that files still open. Give your saved document a recognizable title and writing date, and check the copy you intend to keep rather than assuming it saved correctly.

Make one final pass as the future reader

Read from the top without relying on what you remember about writing the draft. Can you tell when it was written, what each reference means, and where one subject ends and another begins? Check for missing words, pasted fragments, duplicated passages, and an unfinished closing. Then compare the beginning and end of the text in Sealday with your saved copy. Confirm the selected opening date separately from any dates mentioned in the letter. Finish when the message is clear and complete.