The Savannah morning news., 1904-10-12
LETTER-WRITlNG RULES.
From the New York Tribune.

From the New York Tribune.
Always be gracious in your express
sions of thought
Never soil letter with a rude or
vulgar word. Avoid all slang and cant.
BE modest, simple and clear in your
choice of words.
Avoid vanity and self-consciousness.
and use the personal pronoun 'I' as
| little as possible. Try to avoid begin
| nlng a letter with personal pronoun.
| Always verify your spelling and your
| quotations. If in doubt about a word,
take the time to look it up in a die
tionary- Many person has spent half
his life in trying to live down a repu-
| tatlon for bad spelling caused by lazi-
ness in not consulting a dictionary.
Never quote a text from the Bible or
a verse Of poetry unless you are quite
sure you know it correctly.
Do not use high flown" expressions
| or grandlloquent terms. Do not make
your adjectives larger than their
nouns. noun with an adjective that
is too large for it is like a small boy
walking about with his fathers hat
upon his head. Use simple adiectives.
Do not use tremendous and superla-
| tive ones.
Learn the use of capitals and be fru-
| gal in giving capital letters to COM
| mon words. Capital letters go with
proper nouns and other proper arti-
| cles of speech-not with common ones.
Learn the art of punctuation. Com
mas for quarter parts of a sentence,
| colons or semi-colons for half of the
sentence, and a full stop or period at
the end.
Train your ear to have a sense Of
rhythm; read your sentences over and
make them smooth. Do not end a SEN
tence with a proposition or rough,
harsh word. 1t is not enough that a
| sentence should look right; it must
sound right. This is what makes
scanning" such a beautiful part of
our study of the great classics. AS
an illustration OF what is meant by
having our sentences sound right, see
Longfellow's poem of "Evangeline.
Make your sentences not only correct
to your eye, but smooth and rhythmi-
cal to your ear.
The important thing about writing a
letter. after all, is to know what it is
one wants to say. Think out clearly
in advance what you are going to write
about. Emerson says in one of his
essays, 1.-THE secret of eloquence is to
know your facts"
In correspondence at times it is well
to bear in mind that a straight line is
not always the shortest distance be-
tween two given points. There are
two methods of heating a house by
steam. One is by direct radiation. the
other is by indirect radiation. Some
time in writing a letter it is better to
suggest a thing indirectly than to state
it plainly. There are certain cold
hard facts which people do not like
to read in writing. 1t is wise at times
to leave room for the imagination to
work, and to let people draw their
own conclusions without being COM
PEELED to state them ourselves in SO
many words.
When writing an important letter,
make notes in advance of what you
propose TO say, or write our before
hand rough draft or copy of it.
Keep in a blankbook a list of letters
as received with date of their writing.
Answer your letters from this list from
time to time and suit the character
of the reply intended to the proper
mood of mind. Reserve important let
tiers which demand thought and care
and delicacy of expression until you
are in the right mood to reply to them.
DO not, for instance, write letter
of coincidence and sympathy to a friend
| in affection when you are in SIREN
uous mood of mind, just as you are
starting out on Monday morning TO do
| the weeks marketing. In letterwrit-
ing, as in many other things, there are
times when we must brace UP to our
work, and there are times when 1t Is
| the hight of wisdom to become passive
and relaxed.
Never mail a. fierce and angry let
ter. 1t gives you away-if you give
yourself away-and anger by letter is
deliberate. Write out your fierce let
| ter by night, lay it on your desk, read
| it over carefully the next morning,
and then commit 1t tenderly to the
wastepaper basket.
Remember that a letter written and
sent goes you know not where and
| lives perchance for ages. There it
stands, as a witness against you, for
all time. 1t can never be recalled or
| changed, and what you say sits ever
| lastingly in judgment upon you, like
| a slice out of the day of Judgment.
When you do not know whether to
write a letter or not, postpone writing
until you know your own mind bet
| ter.
Remember always that the best let
ter writer's, are those who have always
| a subtle consciousness of the person
| addressed. Most people write to all
their correspondents in much the same
way Just as some clever takers never
get out of their one style of talk.
Be prompt in replying to your let
| tiers, and do not take time in apologize
| ing for your delay in answering them.
| When you come to think of 1t, there is
no reason why you should not answer
most of your letters at once. Put them
/ into your list of daily duties and--do
| them William w. Newton.