Official or Business Letters.—These include all those written by a person in the capacity of an officer, a professional man, a merchant, a tradesman, etc. They are classed together because they are mainly subject to the same rules.
In writing business letters, the following rules should be observed:
1. Be very clear, so that your exact meaning cannot fail to be understood at first sight. Read your letter over with close attention to see that all your thoughts are correctly, fully, and clearly expressed.
2. Take care that the handwriting be legible, else you may get boots for books, matches for hatchets or latches, two ponies instead of one hundred pansies.
3. Be brief and to the point; business men have no time to waste.
4. Confine yourself to strict business. If you wish to add matters of friendship, it is well to write them on a separate leaf, that the business portion may be separately filed.
5. Write grammatical and idiomatic English, and paragraph and punctuate as in other kinds of writing.
Personal and Social Letters.—Under this head may be placed those letters written by any person in his private capacity as an individual. Such letters may be dictated by friendship, by charity or kindness, by politeness, by respect, by gratitude, by self-interest, or by any other reasonable motive.
Among these are the following: