After orthography, you should make it a point to write a good hand; clear, legible, and at the same time easy, graceful, and rapid. This is not so difficult as some persons imagine, but, like other accomplishments, it requires practice to make it perfect. You must write every word so clearly that it cannot be mistaken by the reader, and it is quite an important requisite to leave sufficient space between the words to render each one separate and distinct. If your writing is crowded, it will be difficult to read, even though each letter is perfectly well formed. An English author, in a letter of advice, says:—
“I have often told you that every man who has the use of his eyes and his hand can write whatever hand he pleases. I do not desire that you should write the stiff, labored characters of a writing master; a man of business must write quick and well, and that depends simply upon use. I would, therefore, advise you to get some very good writing master, and apply to it for a month only, which will be sufficient; for, upon my word, the writing of a genteel, plain hand of business is of much more importance than you think. You say, it may be, that when you write so very ill, it is because you are in a hurry; to which, I answer, Why are you ever in a hurry? A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry, because he knows, that whatever he does in a hurry, he must necessarily do very ill. He may be in haste to dispatch an affair, but he will take care not to let that haste hinder his doing it well. Little minds are in a hurry, when the object proves (as it commonly does) too big for them; they run, they puzzle, confound, and perplex themselves; they want to do everything at once, and never do it at all. But a man of sense takes the time necessary for doing the thing he is about, well; and his haste to dispatch a business, only appears by the continuity of his application to it; he pursues it with a cool steadiness, and finishes it before he begins any other....
“The few seconds that are saved in the course of the day by writing ill instead of well, do not amount to an object of time by any means equivalent to the disgrace or ridicule of a badly written scrawl.”
By making a good, clear hand habitual to you, the caution given above, with regard to hurry, will be entirely useless, for you will find that even the most rapid penmanship will not interfere with the beauty of your hand-writing, and the most absorbing interest in the subject of your epistle can be indulged; whereas, if you write well only when you are giving your entire attention to guiding your pen, then, haste in writing or interest in your subject will spoil the beauty of your sheet.
Be very careful that the wording of your letters is in strict accordance with the rules of grammar. Nothing stamps the difference between a well educated man and an ignorant one more decidedly than the purely grammatical language of the one compared with the labored sentences, misplaced verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs of the other. Chesterfield caricatures this fault in the following letter, written as a warning to his son, to guard him against its glaring faults:
“My Lord: I had, last night, the honor of your Lordship’s letter of the 24th; and will set about doing the orders contained therein; and if so be that I can get that affair done by the next post, I will not fail for to give your Lordship an account of it, by next post. I have told the French Minister, as how that if that affair be not soon concluded, your Lordship would think it all long of him; and that he must have neglected for to have wrote to his court about it. I must beg leave to put your Lordship in mind, as how, that I am now full three quarters in arrear; and if so be that I do not very soon receive at least one half year, I shall cut a very bad figure; for this here place is very dear. I shall be vastly beholden to your Lordship for that there mark of your favor; and so I rest or remain, Your, &c.”
This is, I admit, a broad burlesque of a letter written by a man holding any important government office, but in the more private correspondence of a man’s life letters quite as absurd and ungrammatical are written every day.
Punctuation is another very important point in a letter, because it not only is a mark of elegance and education to properly punctuate a letter, but the omission of this point will inevitably confuse your correspondent, for if you write to your friend:
“I met last evening Mr James the artist his son a lawyer Mr Gay a friend of my mother’s Mr Clarke and Mr Paul:”
he will not know whether Mr. Gay is a lawyer or your mother’s friend, or whether it is Mr. James or his son who is an artist; whereas, by the proper placing of a few punctuation marks you make the sentence clear and intelligible, thus: