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:
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“... in writing you cannot possibly be interesting if what you say is not true, if it is what I call “a true lie,” i.e., a truth which gives the wrong impression. For no matter how subtly you lie in writing, people know it and don’t believe you, and the whole secret of being interesting is to be believed.”
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“The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.”
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“Busy replying to letters from divers office-seekers. They come by the dozens.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)