Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing by Lewis Carroll (1890) | Hacker News Reader

Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing by Lewis Carroll (1890)

gutenberg.org

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"when you have written a letter that you feel may possibly irritate your friend, ... put it aside till the next day"

I have a similar policy. Upon receiving an email that makes me hyperventilate even a little, or sets my pulse racing just a bit, by all means draft a reply immediately -- frequently emotional and full of invective -- but the set it aside for at least 24 hours. 48 in more severe cases. Then, and only then, re-read the message that got me all hot and bothered in the first place, re-read my draft reply (assuming I did that) and then redraft as needed before hitting "Send".

I call this my "24-hour Rule" and apply it always.

Then there's the "Never Hit Send While After Even a Single Drink Rule"... but that's another thing for another day.

Sometimes you don't have a day to wait, even just an hour or two can help your cooler-self prevail.

I also draft immediately. The facts are fresh and you're passionate, get it all down so you can sift through it later. I try to make this the "final" draft even though I'm committed to reviewing it later.

Later when I return to the draft the first thing I do is delete everything which can be removed without loss of context. This usually removes a lot of the pissed-off "Let me tell YOU something about YOU that YOU don't know!"* stuff. If it isn't directly substantive it's probably inflammatory.

After it has been boiled down to relevant content take a step back and try to reflect humanely. Think about every lesson in compassion you've experienced in your life. Look the text over; how would you react to this e-mail if it were sent to you? Is even it really productive? Is it necessary? If so, try to think of a couple genuinely positive aspects of the situation— insincerity is only going to cause more discomfort. If there's nothing positive it might be important to do some reflection about why that's the case.

Remove accusatory tone; if you're not the boss (and even so...) then you should almost certainly be using more instances of "we" than "you" both literally and figuratively. Find the unresolved issues and recommend solution, try to supply the beginning of a solution as a token of your good faith despite whatever issues have arisen.

Review the whole message from the perspective of the recipient once more, a bit later if time permits.

This has worked really well for me, sometimes surprisingly so; people have gone from completely irate to "Okay, I'll take care of A and B!" It's pretty crazy.

* Ron White reference

A good test for this kind of thing is to ask these three questions for every statement you make in a confrontational communication:

1. Does this have to be said?

2. Does it have to be said now?

3. Does it have to be said by me?

If you can't answer all three questions with a strong and affirmative yes, then delete the statement.

That seems like an extraordinarily passive approach.

Depends on your measure of necessity to some extent but nonetheless there are many situations where you should say something but you're not required to.

From Buddhism, "5 factors of speech":

[1] "Do I speak at the right time, or not?

[2] "Do I speak of facts, or not?

[3] "Do I speak gently or harshly?

[4] "Do I speak profitable words or not?

[5] "Do I speak with a kindly heart, or inwardly malicious?

Funny that he says to always address the envelope first so you don't rush in the end.

But when it comes to important emails, I always leave the recipient field blank until I'm sure this is what I want to send.

It's a whole lot harder to accidentally send a letter prematurely than send an email prematurely.

If you put a letter in an addressed envelope there is a risk someone else might post/deliver it for you. If you've written a letter you may not want to send then it's probably worth guarding against that if your circumstances allow for such unwanted posting.

Yes, but you tend not to actually put the letter in the envelope until you are ready to send it. That's the equivalent of this.

This was the most familiar:

"My eighth Rule. When you say, in your letter, “I enclose cheque for £5”, or “I enclose John’s letter for you to see”, leave off writing for a moment—go and get the document referred to—and put it into the envelope. Otherwise, you are pretty certain to find it lying about, after the Post has gone!"

I appreciate Thunderbird every time it reminds me to add attachment(s) if it finds that keyword in the email text.

gmail does this too. I've been caught several times having forgotten to actually attach the file.

Mentioned almost as an aside, but I'd never heard of 'cross-writing'[1] before, and now having looked a few examples, I can quite imagine how painful it would be to read.

[1] http://blog.paperblanks.com/2013/03/cross-writing/

> I can quite imagine how painful it would be to read.

Perhaps it'd be easier if a different coloured ink was used for the cross sentences?

You know, CSS can do this too, nowadays. Perhaps some new... ah... "research"... is necessary to see whether this can increase our ability to read online as well.

It's that "April" sort of research one does, if you know what I mean.

Sheesh. Thanks for digging that up. I thought Carrol was simply referring to something I've seen done in postcards (and maybe a couple of old letters): having left a generous left margin, and running out of space at the bottom, the writer would finish sideways on said margin. I.e.

     | |  ---------------
     | |  ---------------

The "On registering Correspondence" section is rather fascinating - neurotic, but probably extremely helpful for someone who received a large number of letters. I wonder what he would've made of "Inbox Zero"!

I think he would have found threaded emails with labeling an acceptable replacement.

Exactly — the stuff on keeping a mail register essentially amounts to manually creating the equivalent of an email client, complete with tracking conversation threads, subject lines, figuring out which messages need replies, and which messages are urgent or require further action.

One thing which struck me is that his example numbering system had exceeded 22000, and I doubt he logged spam.

> his example numbering system had exceeded 22000

There was a lot of correspondence going around. In Carroll's time, good cities would deliver and pick up mail from your home four times a day. (And now plenty of people check their email less often.)

And it was also doing the job of your telephone.

'Beginning in his late twenties, he kept a register of “Letters Received and Sent,” along with a précis of each letter. The final tally was 98,721.'

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/08/go-ask-alice-a-...

I consider writing letters the top way to actually keep in touch, even if no one ever writes back, and it is a great exercise of the mind and body. When I first started writing letters, I was astounded by how difficult it was to write legible and coherent sentences. There were a lot of scribbled out words or sections and it was like I had forgotten how to write. It's very different from writing notes or the everyday writing that you do.

I don't do it that often, I think on average my friends who have moved away get 1 or 2 a year, but I usually include some extra stuff like a thumb drive with some music/mixes or a trinket I happened to buy that I thought someone would appreciate.

Also IMHO, there is also something sepcial about getting a package or letter in the mail that is unexpected and isn't a pre-approved credit card.

The point about putting your full address on the letter reminds me of Microsoft Outlook's irritating habit of stripping email addresses when forwarding emails.

Surprisingly, it turns out the "Wonderland Stamp Case" was a real product: an Alice themed folder with slots for the different types of stamps. Who thought merchandising a fiction franchise started with George Lucas?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Wonderland+Stamp+Case&t=ffcm&iax=1...

"And never, never, dear Madam (N.B. this remark is addressed to ladies only: no man would ever do such a thing), put “Wednesday”, simply, as the date!"

"A Postscript is a very useful invention: but it is not meant (as so many ladies suppose) to contain the real gist of the letter"

Interesting to see how society has changed in a hundred years. This would probably cause a bit of a fuss if it were written today.

Yeah, today instead of an amusing observation that celebrates our differences, it would become fodder to feed a conflict. It really was a gentler time.

I will wait 24 hours before responding to your comment in the way I initially intended to.

You probably meant a "genteeler" time...

Wonderful. Words to live by :)

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