MAY BE fragile verbal tools, dulled by wrong. To discuss putting words to work is not to talk about a bookish frill, but about something needed for rational contact with the world around us.
Some business letters are sadly down at heel.
Some seem to say things that do not need saying, in a way that shows the writer to have had no interest in saying them. Others look all right on the outside, being carefully typed on good paper with the proper margins, but they are as indigestible as a gaudily iced cake filled with concrete. These things don t matter much to a writer whose loftiest notion about his job is to keep the paper flowing. Such a man is depriving himself of a great deal. His limp words rob him of the pleasure of com- municating his thoughts and emotions, of attracting admiring attention, of moving people to do what he wants them to do.