Written and Oral Composition Author:Martin Wright Sampson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER-WRITING LESSON 53 Perhaps ninety-nine hundredths of the writing you will be called upon to do will be letter-writing. Letter-writing, however, does ... more »not constitute a distinct form of discourse, like narration or description, but is rather a combination of all the forms of discourse, modified to suit the needs of the writer and of the recipient of the letter. Thus in letters one may recount an experience (narration), describe a person, place,- or thing (description), explain some matter (exposition), or give reasons why something should be done (argumentation). The fact that you are writing to a definite individual affects, of course, the way in which you will tell about the thing )-ou have in mind; you accommodate your material to suit your reader's personality, and, when the relationship between you and your reader is a friendly one, you naturally put into the letter a good deal of your own personality. Letter-writing is, therefore, as a rule, a much more personal kind of writing than are those compositions which are addressed to a large and varied audience. In telling a story to such an audience, for instance, you must consider whether you can suit many tastes;but in telling a story in a letter, there are but two tastes to be suited, jour hearer's and your own. Yet since a story is a story, it is subject to the laws of narration and an ability to apply the principles of narration — and this is true of the other forms as well — is essential to good letter-writing. There are certain regular and accepted ways of beginning and of ending a letter, certain usages in matter of paper, envelopes, ink, etc., which are important to know and to follow, just as it is important to be acquainted with the usages of refined people and with other matters of courtesy. People are ...« less