Motivations For Writing Open Letters
There are a number of reasons why an individual would choose the form of an open letter, including the following reasons:
- As a last resort to ask the public to judge the letter's recipient or others involved, often but not always, in a critical light
- To state the author's position on a particular issue
- As an attempt to start or end a wider dialogue around an issue
- As an attempt to focus broad attention on the letter's recipient, prompting them to some action
- For humor value
- Simply to make public a communication that must take place as a letter for reasons of formality
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Famous quotes containing the words motivations, writing, open and/or letters:
“The wider the range of possibilities we offer children, the more intense will be their motivations and the richer their experiences. We must widen the range of topics and goals, the types of situations we offer and their degree of structure, the kinds and combinations of resources and materials, and the possible interactions with things, peers, and adults.”
—Loris Malaguzzi (1920–1994)
“When, said Mr. Phillips, he communicated to a New Bedford audience, the other day, his purpose of writing his life, and telling his name, and the name of his master, and the place he ran from, the murmur ran round the room, and was anxiously whispered by the sons of the Pilgrims, “He had better not!” and it was echoed under the shadow of the Concord monument, “He had better not!””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodes ... assumptions about the nature of our reality, the “pattern” in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)