Business Correspondence, Vol. 1: How to Write a Business Letter

by Anonymous

"This letter is to YOU. and it is just as personal as If I had sat down and pounded it off on the typewriter myself, and I am sure that you, as a business man, appreciate that this is a personal message to you, even if I am writing a hundred thousand others at the same time."

* * * * *

This letter struck a popular and responsive chord, for each reader took it to himself as a frank, honest appeal, from a frank, honest business man. It was a direct personal communication because each reader felt that although it was duplicated a thousand times it nevertheless contained a live message.

But the care that some writers take to make the form letter look personal, is the very thing that kills it. They make the letter too perfect. To avoid this result, leave an imperfect word, here and there, throughout the body of the letter. Watch the setting up of the type to be sure the lines are not spaced out like a printed page. Many correspondents imitate the common mistakes of the typewritten letter from the mechanical standpoint and in the language.

Time spent in correcting these errors with pen and ink is usually considered a paying investment. The tympan of the duplicating machine is sometimes made uneven so that the impression of a typewriter is still further carried out. Some duplicating machines advertise that their type print "loose" for this very purpose. A favorite scheme with firms where letter presses are used is to blur the letter slightly after it has been filled in and signed. A word "XXX'd" out as by a typewriter lends an impression of the personal message, as does also the wrong spelling of a word, corrected by pen and ink.

But fully as vital to the individuality of the letter is the manner in which it is closed. The signature of the form letter is a subject that deserves as careful consideration as the superscription and the body of the letter. The actual typewritten letter to Henry Brown is signed with pen and ink. Even where the name of the company also appears at the end of the letter, the personal signature in ink is desirable. And when you write all the Henry Browns on your mailing list, you should apply the pen-and-ink signature to every letter. That is the only effective way.

It is not so essential that the signature should be applied by the writer personally. Often a girl writes the signature, saving the time of a busy department head. Many firms use a rubber facsimile stamp for applying the signature, but it is not as effective, for it is seldom that the stamped name does not stand out as a mechanical signature. One concern adds the name of the company at the bottom of the letter and has a clerk mark initials underneath with pen and ink.

The form letter has a heavy load which carries a row of hieroglyphics at the bottom of the page—the "X-Y-Z," the "4, 8, 6," the "Dictated WML-OR" and the twenty and one other key numbers and symbols common to the form letters of many houses. When a man receives such a letter, he is impressed by the mass of tangled mechanical operations the message has undergone; on its face he has the story of its mechanical make-up and its virility is lost, absolutely.

Then consider the various notes, stamped in a frankly mechanical manner at the bottom of the letter, such as, "Dictated, but not read," "Signed in the absence of Mr. So-and-So." To the average man who finds one of these notes on the letter, there is the impression of a slap in the face. He does not like to be reminded that he may converse with the stenographer in the absence of the president. When a letter says "Not read" he feels that the message was not of sufficient importance to warrant the personal attention of the writer. Eliminate all such notes from the form letter.

Sometimes a postscript may suggest a note of personality. For instance, one firm writes underneath the signature: "I want you to look especially at the new model on page 37 of the catalogue." This is effective if done with pen and ink, but if printed or stamped, it gives no additional tone of individuality to the letter. One manufacturer had a postscript written on an extra slip of paper which he pasted to the corner of the sheet.