Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing

by Lewis Carroll

§ 3. How to go on with a Letter.

Here is a golden Rule to begin with. Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule! A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, “I do it to save time”. A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend’s expense? Isn’t his time as valuable as yours? Years ago, I used to receive letters from a friend——and very interesting letters too——written in one of the most atrocious hands ever invented. It generally took me about a week to read one of his letters! I used to carry it about in my pocket, and take it out at leisure times, to puzzle over the riddles which composed it——holding it in different positions, and at different distances, till at last the meaning of some hopeless scrawl would flash upon me, when I at once wrote down the English under it; and, when several had been thus guessed, the context would help one with the others, till at last the whole series of hieroglyphics was deciphered. If all one’s friends wrote like that, Life would be entirely spent in reading their letters!

This Rule applies, specially, to names of people or places——and most specially to foreign names. I got a letter once, containing some Russian names, written in the same hasty scramble in which people often write “yours sincerely”. The context, of course, didn’t help in the least: and one spelling was just as likely as another, so far as I knew: it was necessary to write and tell my friend that I couldn’t read any of them!

My second Rule is, don’t fill more than a page and a half with apologies for not having written sooner!

The best subject, to begin with, is your friend’s last letter. Write with the letter open before you. Answer his questions, and make any remarks his letter suggests. Then go on to what you want to say yourself. This arrangement is more courteous, and pleasanter for the reader, than to fill the letter with your own invaluable remarks, and then hastily answer your friend’s questions in a postscript. Your friend is much more likely to enjoy your wit, after his own anxiety for information has been satisfied.

In referring to anything your friend has said in his letter, it is best to quote the exact words, and not to give a summary of them in your words. A’s impression, of what B has said, expressed in A’s words, will never convey to B the meaning of his own words.

This is specially necessary when some point has arisen as to which the two correspondents do not quite agree. There ought to be no opening for such writing as “You are quite mistaken in thinking I said so-and-so. It was not in the least my meaning, &c., &c.”, which tends to make a correspondence last for a lifetime.

A few more Rules may fitly be given here, for correspondence that has unfortunately become controversial.

One is, don’t repeat yourself. When once you have said your say, fully and clearly, on a certain point, and have failed to convince your friend, drop that subject: to repeat your arguments, all over again, will simply lead to his doing the same; and so you will go on, like a Circulating Decimal. Did you ever know a Circulating Decimal come to an end?