Yours, Truly

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Anatole Broyard

Does anyone write letters anymore?

After weeks of not looking at two large boxes of accumulated clippings from decades of journalism jobs, I got to the bottom of one box to discover something I'd forgotten. It was a small file box and in it were letters.

In my youth, and until the introduction of the word processor - no typewriter ribbons needed! no cramping hand from holding the pen too tight! no smudgy print! no need to rip out a paper and rearrange the paragraphs! - I wrote letters to friends and family in ink, then switched to the typewriter when my handwriting became too much like the cramped scrawl of my doctor father. 

When I was about to leave college I asked several of my journalism professors - all working newspeople - to write a letter of recommendation I could send to possible sources of employment. I found those letters as well as the rejection letters from newspapers in Casper, Wyoming, Kansas City, Mo., and Holyoke, Massachusetts, among other places. The letters didn't do much to help me. All these papers were rather polite in saying my abilities didn't meet their objectives.

I was nowhere near cum laude level and I did not graduate from an Ivy League college. Another paper I found in this box was a college transcript from my junior year. Why that one? I don't remember. Perhaps a potential employer wanted to see how smart I was. If so that person must've been disappointed because I see a lot of C+ grades in there. One of two A- grades, however, was news writing and reporting. I got a B- in copy editing.

It is a good thing I went to "graduate school" by working in the trade and improving my abilities in my hometown of New York City. As far as I know none of my later employers wanted to learn I had a 3.16 grade point average.

From my current vantage point, finding these letters fills me with wonder. It means someone took the time and made the effort to put a piece of paper in a typewriter (even if it was a secretary doing the hiring guy's bidding), put it in an envelope, address it, stamp it and put it down the mail chute.

Who does that now? Schools are debating whether to even teach cursive writing, for Pete's sake, much less how to use a typewriter.

(Vecteezy.com)

Now you apply for jobs through LinkedIn and you can get updates as to how your applications are doing. After my "retirement" from the last job I answered a lot of ads. I got rejected a lot. It was all done with boilerplate. Now it's done with AI. No person is involved in looking at my profile, reading my job application or writing the rejection letter. I'm still getting messages about people looking at my profile but I've heard from no one and am making no effort to find out who's interested.

I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.

Jane Austen

I had better luck with newspapers when I wrote a letter to the editor, maybe because I wasn't trying to impress anyone or ask for a job. I just wrote the way I speak, which is with something resembling intelligence and proper spelling and grammar, as befitting my time in the trade.

"I found it fascinating that two front-page articles in Circuits [the New York Times tech section that no longer runs] on June 25 contradicted each other," I wrote on June 29, four days after the articles ran; the letter was published three days later. ... "I was struck by how a generation of people are becoming so dependent on G.P.S. that they soon won't be able to read a map." 

Or this one in New Jersey's Star-Ledger newspaper (like a lot others, now online only):

"Now that you have conquered the HOV lanes, perhaps you will next consider another group of put-upon New Jersey commuters: those of us who ride New Jersey Transit."

Nowadays, article writers will get feedback nearly the moment the online article is published. If you want to comment on a New York Times article you have to create an account and then log in - you can't read most articles in full unless you log in - and leave your comment. Someone will comment on your comment almost immediately, and so on. Sometimes those comments get pretty heated and a webmaster has to step in.

(Yes, the New York Times still publishes a newspaper and there are still letters to the editor, but online "letters" are immediate gratification in a time when "on demand" is de rigueur.)

This is not thoughtfully putting words to paper, this is shooting your mouth off. It is why social media gets blamed for so much of the hate in this world. It is too easy to write a comment - on a news story, on Facebook, on who knows what else - and mouth off. I know because I do it, though I do try to count to 10 first.

I got my first job when I went to the offices of various publishers in New York and asked if they had any openings. I was young then. One guy hired me. It was a terrible job for a terrible boss but a co-worker told me about another place where I might find a job. I mailed a resume and letter. I soon got the response.

"Your resume has been received and we are interested in setting up an exploratory interview with you. Please call for an appointment.

"Cordially..."

I liked that "cordially." I got that job, and after a few years there I applied for another job through a classified ad in the New York Times - there was a time when newspapers had to fill some their pages with classified job advertising, usually in the Sunday edition - and wound up spending eight years working for my favorite boss.

It is rare I get such glad tidings through the U.S. Postal Service nowadays.