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
Read more about this topic: Open Letters
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“If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.”
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