How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) by Mary Owens Crowther (interesting novels to read txt) π
The mechanical construction of a letter, whether social, friendly, or business, falls into six or seven parts. This arrangement has become established by the best custom. The divisions are as follows:
1. Heading 2. Inside address (Always used in business letters but omitted in social and friendly letters) 3. Salutation 4. Body 5. Complimentary close 6. Signature 7. Superscription
1. THE HEADING
The heading of a letter contains the street address, city, state, and the date. The examples below will illustrate:
2018 Calumet Street or 1429 Eighth Avenue Chicago, Ill. New York, N.Y. May 12, 1921 March 8, 1922
[Illustration: In the business letterhead appear the name of the firm, its address, and the kind of business engaged in]
When the heading is typewritten or written by hand, it is placed at the top of the first letter sheet close to the right-hand margin. It should begin about in the center, that is, it should extend no farther to the left than the ce
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"The author of any letter or letters, and his representatives, whether they are literary letters or letters of business, possess the sole and exclusive copyright therein; and no person, neither those to whom they are addressed, nor other persons, have any right or authority to publish the same upon their own account or for their benefit."
But then, again, there are exceptions.
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CHAPTER XII THE COST OF A LETTERDiscovering the exact cost of a letter is by no means an easy affair. However, approximate figures may always be had and they are extremely useful. The cost of writing an ordinary letter is quite surprising. Very few letters can be dictated, transcribed, and mailed at a cost of much less than twelve cents each. The factors which govern costs are variable and it is to be borne in mind that the methods for ascertaining costs as here given represent the least cost and not the real costβthey simply tell you "Your letter costs at least this sum." They do not say "Your letter costs exactly this sum." The cost of a form letter, mailed in quantities, can be gotten at with considerable accuracy. The cost of letters dictated by correspondents or by credit departments or other routine departments is also capable of approximation with fair accuracy, but the cost of a letter written by an executive can really hardly be more than guessed at. But in any case a "not-less-than" cost can be had.
In recent years industrial engineers have done a great deal of work in ascertaining office costs and have devised many useful plans for lowering them. These plans mostly go to the saving of stenographers' time through suitable equipment, better arrangement of supplies, and specialization of duties. For instance, light, the kind or height of chair or desk, the tension of the typewriter, the location of the paper and carbon paper, all tend to make or break the efficiency of the typist and are cost factors. In offices where a great deal of routine mail is handled, the writing of the envelopes and the mailing is in the hands of a separate department of specialists with sealing and stamp affixing machines. The proper planning of a correspondence department is a science in itself, and several good books exist on the subject. But all of this has to do with the routine letter.
When an executive drawing a high salary must write a letter, it is his time and not the time of the stenographer that counts. He cannot be kept waiting for a stenographer, and hence it is economy for him to have a personal secretary even if he does not write enough letters to keep a single machine busy through more than a fraction of a day. Many busy men do not dictate letters at all; they have secretaries skilled in letter writing. In fact, a man whose salary exceeds thirty thousand dollars a year cannot afford to write a letter excepting on a very important subject. He will commonly have a secretary who can write the letter after only a word or two indicating the subject matter. Part of the qualification of a good secretary is an ability to compose letters which are characteristic of the principal.
Take first the cost of a circular letterβone that is sent out in quantities without any effort to secure a personal effect. The items of cost are:
(1) The postage.
(2) The paper and printing.
(3) The cost of addressing, sealing, stamping, and mailing.
The third item is the only one that offers any difficulty. Included in it are first the direct laborβthe wages of the human beings employed; and, second, the overhead expense. The second item includes the value of the space occupied by the letter force, the depreciation on the equipment, and finally the supervision and the executive expense properly chargeable to the department. Unless an accurate cost system is in force the third item cannot be accurately calculated. The best that can be done is to take the salaries of the people actually employed on the work and guess at the proper charge for the space. The sum of the three items divided by the number of letters is the cost per letter. It is not an accurate cost. It will be low rather than high, for probably the full share of overhead expense will not be charged.
It will be obvious, however, that the place to send out circular letters is not a room in a high-priced office building, unless the sending is an occasional rather than a steady practice. Costs in this work are cut by better planning of the work and facilities, setting work standards, paying a bonus in excess of the standards, and by the introduction of automatic machinery. The Post Office now permits, under certain conditions, the use of a machine which prints a stamp that is really a frank. This is now being used very generally by concerns which have a heavy outgoing mail. Then there are sealing machines, work conveyors, and numerous other mechanical and physical arrangements which operate to reduce the costs. They are useful, however, only if the output be very large indeed.
The personally dictated letter has these costs:
(1) The postage.
(2) The stationery.
(3) The dictator's timeβboth in dictating and signing.
(4) The stenographer's time.
(5) The direct overhead expense, which includes the space occupied, the supervision, the executive overhead, and like items.
The troublesome items here are numbers three and five. If the dictator is a correspondent then the calculation of how much it costs him to dictate a letter is his salary plus the overhead on the space that he occupies, divided by the number of letters that he writes in an average month. It takes him longer to write a long than a short letter, but routine letters will average fairly over a period of a month. But an executive who writes only letters that cannot be written by correspondents or lower salaried men commonly does so many other things in the course of a day that although his average time of dictation per letter may be ascertained and a cost gotten at, the figure will not be a true cost, for the dictation of an important letter comes only after a consideration of the subject matter which commonly takes much longer than the actual dictation. And then, again, the higher executive is usually an erratic letter writerβhe may take two minutes or twenty minutes over an ordinary ten-line letter. Some men read their letters very carefully after transcription. The cost of this must also be reckoned in.
The cost of any letter is therefore a matter of the particular office. It will vary from six or seven cents for a letter made up of form paragraphs to three or four dollars for a letter written by a high-salaried president of a large corporation. A fair average cost for a personally dictated letter written on good paper is computed by one of the leading paper manufacturers, after a considerable survey to be:
Postage .0200
Printing letterheads and envelopes .0062
Stenographic wages (50 letters per day, $20.00 per week) .0727
Office overhead .0727
Paper and envelopes .0054
βββ
$.1770
The above does not include the expense of dictation.
It will pay any man who writes a considerable number of letters to discover what his costs areβand then make his letters so effective that there will be fewer of them.
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CHAPTER XIII STATIONERY, CRESTS AND MONOGRAMS Social CorrespondenceFor all social correspondence use plain sheets of paper, without lines, of white or cream, or perhaps light gray or a very dull blue. But white or cream is the safest. Select a good quality. Either a smooth vellum finish or a rough linen finish is correct. For long letters there is the large sheet, about five by six and one half inches, or it may be even larger. There is a somewhat smaller size, about four and one half by five and one half or six inches for formal notes, and a still smaller size for a few words of congratulation or condolence. The social note must be arranged so as to be contained on the first page only.
A man should not, for his social correspondence, use office or hotel stationery. His social stationery should be of a large size.
Envelopes may be either square or oblong.
In the matter of perfumed stationery, if perfume is used at all, it must be very delicate. Strong perfumes or perfumes of a pronounced type have a distinctly unpleasant effect on many people. It is better form to use none.
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An inviolable rule is to use black ink.
The most approved forms of letter and notepaper (although the use of addressed paper is not at all obligatory and it is perfectly proper to use plain paper) have the address stamped in Roman or Gothic lettering at the top of the sheet in the centre or at the right-hand side about three quarters of an inch from the top. The color used may be black, white, dark blue, dark green, silver, or gold. Country houses, where there are frequent visitors, have adopted the custom of placing the address at the upper right and the telephone, railroad station, and post office at the left. The address may also appear on the reverse flap of the envelope.
Crests and monograms are not used when the address is engraved at the top of a letter sheet. Obviously the crowding of address and crest or monogram would not be conducive to good appearance in the letter.
A monogram, originally a cipher consisting of a single letter, is a design of two or more letters intertwined. It is defined as a character of several letters in one, or made to appear as one. The letters may be all the letters of a name, or the initial letters of the Christian and surnames.
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Many of the early Greek and Roman coins bear the monograms of rulers or of the town in which they were struck. The Middle Ages saw the invention of all sorts of ciphers or monograms, artistic, commercial, and ecclesiastical. Every great personage had his monogram. The merchants used them, the "merchant's mark" being the merchant's initials mingled with a private device and almost invariably a cross, as a protection against disaster or to distinguish their wares from those of Mohammedan eastern traders. Early printers used monograms, and they serve to identify early printed books.
A famous monogram is the interlaced "H.D." of Henry II and Diane de Poitiers. It appeared lavishly upon every building which Henry II erected. It was also stamped on the bindings in the royal library, with the bow, the quiver, and the crescent of Diana.
Monograms and crests on stationery, after a period of disuse, seem to be coming into
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