Every so often I find myself cracking open LibreOffice to write a mildly-formal letter—perhaps a thank-you note to an author, or a letter to members of Congress—and going “Gosh, I wish I had LaTeX here”. I used to have a good template for this but lost it years ago; I’ve recently spent some time recreating it using KOMA-Script’s scrlttr2 class. KOMA’s docs are excellent, but there’s a lot to configure, and I hope this example might save others some time.

Here is the TeX file. You should be able to build it with pdflatex example.tex; it’ll spit out a PDF file like this one.

% Skip footer to give us more space on the first page, US letter paper, no fold
% marks, wide body text
\documentclass[version=last,foldmarks=false,paper=letter,
pagesize,firstfoot=false,DIV=13]{scrlttr2}

% Letter paper
\LoadLetterOption{UScommercial9}
% For various widths, see page 163 of the koma-script manual, figure 4.1,
% "Schematic of the pseudo-lengths for a letter",
% https://ctan.math.illinois.edu/macros/latex/contrib/koma-script/doc/scrguide-en.pdf
% I think the default puts the header a little too close to the top
\setplength{firstheadvpos}{1in}
% Bring the addresses and date in a bit from the edges
\setplength{firstheadhpos}{1in}
\setplength{toaddrhpos}{1in}
% Shrink the bottom margins; we don't have any footer and it looks weird
% otherwise
\setlength{\textheight}{9in}
\setlength{\footskip}{0in}
\setlength{\footheight}{0in}
% A little more room to write signatures
\setplength{sigbeforevskip}{5em}
% No page numbers etc
\pagestyle{empty}

\setkomavar{fromname}{Bruciferous Brunchley}
\setkomavar{fromaddress}{4321 Sender Ave\\
New York, NY 10001}
\setkomavar{fromphone}{(415) 308-7203}

\setkomavar{date}{March 3\textsuperscript{rd}, 2026}

\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Carmen Carbide\\
1234 Recipient Way\\
Portland, OR 97203}

\opening{Dear Mx. Carbide,}

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis
nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore
eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident,
sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum...

\closing{Propituitously,}

\ps PS: What a delight to read of your recent adventures underwater. Perhaps
someday I'll join you on a dive.

\end{letter}
\end{document}