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Read Ebook: Angiola Maria: Storia domestica by Carcano Giulio
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PAGE In the business letterhead appear the name of the firm, its address, and the kind of business engaged in 11
Letterheads used by a life insurance company, a law firm, and three associations 13
In the case of widely known firms, or where the name of the firm itself indicates it, reference to the nature of the business is often omitted from letterheads 14
Specimens of letterheads used for official stationery 27
As to the use of the symbol "&" and the abbreviation of the word "Company," the safest plan in writing to a company is to spell its name exactly as it appears on its letterhead 42
Specimen of formal wedding invitation 48
Specimens of formal invitations to a wedding reception 51
Specimen of wedding announcement 54
Specimens of formal dinner invitations 60
Specimens of formal invitations "to meet" 63
Specimens of formal invitations to a dance 68
Specimens of business letterheads 140
Arrangement of a business letter 144
Arrangement of a business letter 145
Specimens of business letterheads used by English firms 207
Specimens of addressed social stationery 259
Specimens of addressed social stationery 260
The monograms in the best taste are the small round ones, but many pleasing designs may be had in the diamond, square, and oblong shapes 262
Specimens of crested letter and notepaper 263
Specimens of monogrammed stationery 266
Specimens of business letterheads 267
Department stores and firms that write many letters to women often employ a notepaper size 270
Specimens of stationery used by men for personal business letters 271
HOW TO WRITE LETTERS
WHAT IS A LETTER?
It is not so long since most personal letters, after an extremely formal salutation, began "I take my pen in hand." We do not see that so much nowadays, but the spirit lingers. Pick up the average letter and you cannot fail to discover that the writer has grimly taken his pen in hand and, filled with one thought, has attacked the paper. That one thought is to get the thing over with.
And perhaps this attitude of getting the thing over with at all costs is not so bad after all. There are those who lament the passing of the ceremonious letter and others who regret that the "literary" letter--the kind of letter that can be published--is no longer with us. But the old letter of ceremony was not really more useful than a powdered wig, and as for the sort of letter that delights the heart and lightens the labor of the biographer--well, that is still being written by the kind of person who can write it. It is better that a letter should be written because the writer has something to say than as a token of culture. Some of the letters of our dead great do too often remind us that they were not forgetful of posterity.
The average writer of a letter might well forget culture and posterity and address himself to the task in hand, which, in other than the most exceptional sort of letter, is to say what he has to say in the shortest possible compass that will serve to convey the thought or the information that he wants to hand on. For a letter is a conveyance of thought; if it becomes a medium of expression it is less a letter than a diary fragment.
Most of our letters in these days relate to business affairs or to social affairs that, as far as personality is concerned, might as well be business. Our average letter has a rather narrow objective and is not designed to be literature. We may, it is true, write to cheer up a sick friend, we may write to tell about what we are doing, we may write that sort of missive which can be classified only as a love letter--but unless such letters come naturally it is better that they be not written. They are the exceptional letters. It is absurd to write them according to rule. In fact, it is absurd to write any letter according to rule. But one can learn the best usage in correspondence, and that is all that this book attempts to present.
The heyday of letter writing was in the eighteenth century in England. George Saintsbury, in his interesting "A Letter Book," says:
There is a wide distinction between a letter and an epistle. The letter is a substitute for a spoken conversation. It is spontaneous, private, and personal. It is non-literary and is not written for the eyes of the general public. The epistle is in the way of being a public speech--an audience is in mind. It is written with a view to permanence. The relation between an epistle and a letter has been compared to that between a Platonic dialogue and a talk between two friends. A great man's letters, on account of their value in setting forth the views of a school or a person, may, if produced after his death, become epistles. Some of these, genuine or forgeries, under some eminent name, have come down to us from the days of the early Roman Empire. Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, are the principal names to which these epistles, genuine and pseudonymous, are attached.
Some of the letters of Cicero are rather epistles, as they were intended for the general reader.
The ancient world--Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, Rome, and Greece--figures in our inheritance of letters. In Egypt have been discovered genuine letters. The papyrus discoveries contain letters of unknowns who had no thought of being read by the general public.
Later epistolary satires are Pascal's "Provincial Letters," Swift's "Drapier Letters," and the "Letters of Junius."
Pope, soon to be followed by Lady Mary Montagu, was the first Englishman who treated letter writing as an art upon a considerable scale.
Modern journalism uses a form known as the "open letter" which is really an epistle.
But we are not here concerned with the letter as literature.
THE PURPOSE OF THE LETTER
No one can go far wrong in writing any sort of letter if first the trouble be taken to set out the exact object of the letter. A letter always has an object--otherwise why write it? But somehow, and particularly in the dictated letter, the object frequently gets lost in the words. A handwritten letter is not so apt to be wordy--it is too much trouble to write. But a man dictating may, especially if he be interrupted by telephone calls, ramble all around what he wants to say and in the end have used two pages for what ought to have been said in three lines. On the other hand, letters may be so brief as to produce an impression of abrupt discourtesy. It is a rare writer who can say all that need be said
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