Open Letters - Motivations For Writing Open Letters

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

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)

    I think it’s the real world. The people we’re writing about in professional sports, they’re suffering and living and dying and loving and trying to make their way through life just as the brick layers and politicians are.
    Walter Wellesley (Red)

    Oh! joyous hearts! enfired with holy flame!
    Is speech thus tasseled with praise?
    Will not your inward fire of joy contain:
    That it in open flames doth blaze?
    For in Christ’s coach saints sweetly sing,
    As they to glory ride therein.
    Edward Taylor (1645–1729)

    A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist—nothing shields him from the world’s gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.
    —E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)