Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
His addressees were members of the editorial board. Surely the editorial board should be accustomed to reading lengthy prose?
Now, writing a 14-page letter, of a quality that matches published articles, is what's wild to me.
Just a different media ;)
He replied. it was 3 full paragraphs. He told me to study algorithms and to learn python.
You're right. I absolutely should frame it.
Fortunately, it survived a house flood which destroyed the book it was in, so now the envelope it's in is prominently displayed on a rack in my living room and would be one of the things I'd grab in the event of a fire.
Every so often, when a co-worker knows who Knuth is I bring it in to a workplace to show off.
Still, a guy can dream. If I ever pick up Art of Computer Programming I might give it a go again.
https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/dt.html
My correction is for pg. 33, and there was a minor point of improvement which I can't find.
He just needs to write a book on obscure cartoon history, and I'll be shoe-in. Until then I think I will just have to deal with living in envy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie
(scroll down to "System of Measurement")
or see:
You really cannot understand why Donald Knuth would expect the editorial board of The Journal of Algorithms to read his letter?
> Herb Wilf has co-founded two major journals, Journal of Algorithms in 1980 with Donald Knuth ...
When the founder of the journal writes the editorial board (not the reviewers of papers), it is probably expected to be read.
[1] And nobody will read it, and everybody agree even the publisher. The publisher want to increase the price anyway, and everyone else want a cheaper journal.
Bottom line up. Ususally what you need the other side to grok can be summarized in two sentences. Start with that. Give details after. If you have multiple topics seperate them into sections or make a list.
Any message is something the receiver needs to decode into actionable information. Often the receivers don't have any idea where your mind is, so you first need to being them there. The worst kind of message is one where you need to read all the way to the end to even figure out what the heck it is about and then read it again just to get what they want.