Changing Enclosure Line to Italics in Letter

Question

I am using the letter documentclass to write a cover letter, and want to use the encl line. I have the following test case:

\documentclass{letter}

\signature{First Last}
\address{Source address}

\begin{document}

\begin{letter}{Destination address}
\opening{To Whom it May Concern:}

This is the body of the letter.

\closing{Sincerely,}

\encl{Important document}

\end{letter}
\end{document}

which produces the following:

I would like to tweak the formatting of the last line, encl: Important document, probably to be in italics. How can I control the typesetting of that line, including the encl: component?

Answer 1

The \encl name - what you see as \encl in the output - is set within \enclname. You can change it's formatting with something like

\renewcommand{\enclname}{\itshape encl}

in your preamble, together with

\encl{\itshape Important document}

inside your document code:

\documentclass{letter}

\signature{First Last}
\address{Source address}
\renewcommand{\enclname}{\itshape encl}

\begin{document}

\begin{letter}{Destination address}
\opening{To Whom it May Concern:}

This is the body of the letter.

\closing{Sincerely,}

\encl{\itshape Important document}

\end{letter}

\end{document}

However, there is really no need for the letter class, since you can achieve the same output using article, and it provides a similar-looking output:

\documentclass{article}

\pagestyle{empty}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

\begin{document}

\vspace*{50pt}% Leave some space from the top of the document

\hfill
\begin{tabular}{l @{}}
  Source addres \\
  \\
  \today
\end{tabular}

\bigskip

Destination address

\bigskip

To Whom it May Concern:

\medskip

This is the body of the letter.

\bigskip

\hspace{.5\linewidth}%
\begin{tabular}{ l }
  Sincerely, \\
  \\[2\bigskipamount]
  First Last
\end{tabular}

\bigskip

{\itshape encl: Important document}

\end{document}

With the article approach, you have free range to change content formatting.