never be written at
all, and of the other half so many are incomplete or incoherent that a
transaction which could be finished and filed away in two letters
frequently requires six or eight.

A good letter is the result of clear thinking and careful planning. In
the case of the sales-letter it sometimes takes several weeks to write
one, but for ordinary correspondence a few minutes is usually all that
is necessary. The length of time does not matter--it is the sort of
letter which is produced at the end of it.

Books of commercial correspondence give a number of rules and standards
by which a letter can be measured. But all rules of thumb are dangerous,
and there are only two items which are essential. The others are
valuable only as they contribute to them. The letter must succeed in
getting its idea across and it must build up good will for its firm. And
the best one is the one which accomplishes this most courteously and
most completely in the briefest space of time (and paper).

There should be a reason back of every letter if it is only to say
"Thank you" to a customer. Too much of our national energy goes up in
waste effort, in aimless advertising, worthless salesmanship,
ineffective letter writing, and in a thousand and one other ways. A lot
of it is hammered out on the typewriters transcribing perfectly useless
letters to paper which might really be worth something if it were given
over to a different purpose.

A good letter never attracts the mind of the reader to itself as a thing
apart from its contents. Last year a publishing house sent out a hundred
test letters advertising one of their books. Three answers came back,
none of them ordering the book, but all three praising the letter. One
was from a teacher of commercial English who declared that he was going
to use it as a model in his classes, and the other two congratulated the
firm on having so excellent a correspondent. The physical make-up of the
letter was attractive, it was written by a college graduate and couched
in clear, correct, and colorful English. And yet it was no good. No
_letter and no advertisement is any good which calls attention to itself
instead of the message it is trying to deliver_.

There is not much room for individuality in the make-up of a letter.
Custom has standardized it, and startling variations from the
conventional format indicates freakishness rather than originality. They
are like that astonishing gentleman who wal