But no general rules for letter writing give much help; nor for that matter, do general rules for any kind of writing. A little practice in the concrete, under intelligent guidance, is worth any number of rhetorical platitudes. But such as it is, the rule for a business letter is just the reverse of that for a friendly letter. It should be as brief as is consistent with clearness, for your correspondent is a business man, whose time is his money. It should above all things, however, be explicit; and in striving to avoid surplusage should omit nothing that is necessary. Ambiguity is here the unpardonable sin and has occasioned thousands of law suits, involving millions of dollars. It should be severely impersonal. Pleasantries, sentiments, digressions and the like are impertinences in a business letter, like the familiarity of an unintroduced stranger. I knew a lawyer—and a good lawyer—who suffered professionally, because he would get himself into his business letters. He made jokes; he made quotations; sometimes French quotations which his correspondents could not translate; he expressed opinions and vented emotions on subjects only incidentally connected with the matter in hand, which he embroidered with wit and fancy; and he was a long time coming to the point. Now men of business may trifle about all other serious aspects of life or death, but when it concerns the making of money, they are in deadly earnest; so that my friend’s frivolous treatment of those interests seemed to them little less than sacrilege.