Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/36

 because of lack of experience or facility in the use of written language, has learned fully to put his own personality into his letters, but there are very few who do not in some way reveal their personal characteristics through their letters. Men because of their more general training and experience in business are briefer in their letters, more direct, less emotional, more practical. They get to their point more quickly and are often quite barren of details and so lacking in interest. Their communications are like the small boy's diary at sea. "Rained," he says laconically in recounting the events of one day, and the next, "Rained some more," and that for him is the end of the story, being all that happened and all that he has to say.

Women, on the other hand, are not so easily stopped. It is an unusual woman who can get to a simple point in less than four pages; often it requires eight, and then one is sometimes forced to re-read the letter to satisfy one's self as to what the point is. When a father makes inquiry of me as to how his son is getting on in college he usually gets the question out of his system in from four to six lines.