The principles of style and form in letter writing do not reach their highest pulling power as long as the correspondent handles them like strange tools. The principles must, of course, first be learned and consciously applied. But to give your letter the touch of sincerity and of spontaneity; to give it the grip that holds and the hook that pulls, these principles must become a part of yourself. They must appear in your letters, not because you have consciously put them in but because your thinking and your writing possesses them.
How To Make Letters
ORIGINAL
PART III—STYLE—MAKING THE LETTER READABLE—CHAPTER 10
The average business letter is machine-made. It is full of time-worn phrases, hackneyed expressions and commonplace observations that fail to jolt the reader out of the rut of the conventional correspondence to which he is accustomed: consequently it does not make an impression upon him. But occasionally a letter comes along that "gets under the skin," that STANDS OUT from the rest because it has "human interest;" because it is original in its statements; because it departs from the prescribed hum-drum routine; because, in short, it reflects a live, breathing human being and not a mere set of rules
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Study the letters the janitor carries out in your waste-basket— they lack the red blood of originality. Except for one here and one there they are stereotyped, conventional, long, uninteresting, tiresome. They have no individuality; they are poor representatives of an alert, magnetic personality.
Yet there is no legerdemain about writing a good letter; it is neither a matter of luck nor of genius. Putting in the originality that will make it pull is not a secret art locked up in the mental storerooms of a few successful writers; it is purely a question of study and the application of definite principles.
A lawyer is successful only in proportion to the understanding he has of the law—the study he puts on his cases; a physician's success depends upon his careful consideration of every symptom and his knowledge of the effect of every drug or treatment that he may prescribe. And it is no different with correspondents. They cannot write letters that will pulsate with a vital message unless they study their proposition in detail, visualize the individuals to whom they are writing, consider the language they use, the method of presenting their arguments, their inducements—there is no point from the salutation to the signature that is beneath consideration. You cannot write letters that pull without hard study any more than the doctor can cure his patients or the lawyer win his cases without brain work.
So many letters are insipid because the correspondents do not have time or do not appreciate the necessity for taking time to consider the viewpoint of their readers or for studying out new methods of presenting their proposition. Yet the same respect that would be given to a salesman may be secured for a letter. Any one of four attitudes will secure this attention. First of all, there may be a personal touch and an originality of thought or expression that commands immediate attention; in the second place, one can make use of the man-to-man appeal; then there is the always-forceful, never-to-be-forgotten "you" element; and finally, there are news items which are nearly always interest-getters.
By any one of these appeals, or better, by a combination of appeals, a letter can be given an individuality, a vitality, that will make it rise above the underbrush of ordinary business correspondence.