ought of being read by the general public.

During the Renaissance, Cicero's letters were used as models for one of
the most common forms of literary effort. There is a whole literature of
epistles from Petrarch to the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_. These are,
to some degree, similar to the Epistles of Martin Marprelate.

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.

CHAPTER II

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 in one line and not seem rude. But it can be done.

The single purpose of a letter is to convey thought. That thought may
have to do with facts, and the further purpose may be to have the
thought produce action. But plainly the action depends solely upon how
well the thought is transferred. Words as used in a letter are vehicles
for thought, but every word is not a vehicle for thought, because it may
not be the kind of word that goes to the place where you want your
thought to go; or, to put it another way, there is a wide variation in
the understanding of words. The average American vocabulary is quite
limited, and where an exactly phrased letter might completely convey an
exact thought to a person of education, that same letter might be
meaningless to a person who understands but few words. Therefore, it is
fatal in general letter writing to venture into unusual words or to go
much beyond the vocabulary of, say, a grammar school graduate.
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