Classical English Letter Writer

VII. Let the exterior appearance of your letter, as well as its intrinsic qualities, be the object of your attention. Write a fair and legible hand. Be sparing in the use of dashes, interlineations, and underlinings. Make no abbreviations in orthography, except those which are warranted by the general practice of the most correct writers. Always leave a vacancy for the seal or wafer, in order that when your correspondent opens your letter, no part of the writing may be torn. Write your name at length, with particular distinctness and uniformity, and in a rather larger character than that in which your letter is written. Avoid postscripts, except when they are necessary for the mentioning of some circumstance that occurred after your letter was written. Fold, direct, and seal your letter neatly and properly.

To write, with ease and expedition, a good, uniform, and perfectly legible hand, is indispensable in business; and is highly useful in every station, and in all circumstances, of life. Good hand-writing sets off and recommends the best composition; and is some apology for the worst. "I maintain," says an ingenious author, "that it is in every man's power to write what hand he pleases; and, consequently, that he ought to write a good one *."

Dashes, underlinings, and interlineations, are much used

* On the subject of writing, the following directions may be of use to young persons.-Form every letter and word distinctly. As soon as you can write well, learn to write quick; not a stiff, formal hand, but a genteel and liberal one, or, what is called, a running hand, which is most favourable to ease and expedition: but be particularly careful that your writing may be large and strong enough, to be easily legible by others, and by yourselves when you advance in life. Let the lines on every page of your letter, correspond exactly to each other; leave sufficient spaces between them, to exhi

by unskilful and careless writers, merely as substitutes for proper punctuation, and a correct, regular mode of expression. The frequent recurrence of them greatly defaces a letter; and is equally inconsistent with neatness of ap pearance and regularity of composition. All occasion for interlineations may usually be superseded by a little previous thought and attention. Dashes are proper only when the sense evidently requires a greater pause than the common stops designate. And, in a well constructed sentence, to underline a word, is wholly useless, except, on some very particular occasion, we wish to attract peculiar attention to it, or to give it an uncommon degree of importance or emphasis.

Of the propriety of leaving a vacancy for the seal, the following circumstance, which is similar to what frequently occurs, affords a striking proof. "I had a letter from a friend lately," says Mr. Orton in a letter to a young clergyman, "who desired me to transact some business for him, which was the chief purport of his letter; but he had unfortunately put the wafer on the most material part of the commission, so that I could not tell what he had desired me to do for him."

Postscripts have a very awkward appearance; and they generally indicate thoughtlessness and inattention. To make use of them in order to convey assurances of respect

bit the writing on one line quite distinct from that on the preceding and the following line; and make them even and regular, which, by attention and habit, you can readily accomplish, without accustoming yourselves to the use of ruled lines. Let your ink be good, and of a proper blackness; which contributes, very materially, to neatness and distinctness in writing. Learn to make and mend your own pens: do not, however, let your writing depend too much on your pen; but accustom yourselves, upon occasion, to write well, or at least legibly, with an indifferent or even a bad pen.

or affection to the person to whom you write, or to those who are intimately connected with him, is particularly improper it seems to imply that the sentiments which you express, are so slightly impressed on your mind, that you had almost forgotten them, or thought them scarcely worth mentioning.

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