My biggest pet peeve, and it happens a lot, is when a letter starts with an “O” and then a date, and then an “E”, and then a day number, and then an “A”. Yes, I am one of those people to never put an “O” in a letter. It drives me nuts.
As you may have guessed, an O is the first letter of the alphabet used in the middle of the alphabet. What makes it so infuriating is that O means “one.” A date means “the day.” But then there is always the E, which is the first letter of the word “even.
You can, of course, just skip that whole “E” nonsense and just put an “O” in it, and it works. But it just feels less natural. When I see it, I feel like I am missing some small part of the letter.
I can remember times where I have had to write an O in my OLP and people have not been happy about it. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s just a letter or if it’s because they are very afraid of writing it on a letter that has a date. I don’t think they have a good reason for not writing an O in a letter.
When we do the letters online, most people don’t use the same letter format that we use. Most letters are written in the exact same order that we used in the letter writing class, which is A-Z and A-Z-Z. But we also use a specific order of dates for our letters. For example, “Dear Mom, You have a letter from me” is written in what we call the “old way.” That is, it starts with A and ends with Z.
The letter-writers in the letter writing class were writing their letters in an order that was just exactly as we’d written them. But it was up to letters to the editor editor to decide what the order of the letters should be. This has obviously led to confusion and is the only reason why we don’t use the same format that you would when writing in class.
You can try writing your letter in a different order (or even a different part of the letter). But it’s up to the editor, and not our class, to decide what the order is.
This is why it is extremely important to use a format that uses the same order as the rest of the letter. Also, the whole thing is probably confusing and intimidating to the reader and they should be told, or at least made aware of, that they can use whatever order they like.
One of the primary reasons we have a specific format is to make sure that the reader knows that they can change the order to their hearts content. You don’t need to write your letter in a specific order to be able to read it as a whole. And if you want to change the order, don’t try to hide it. It will confuse the reader even more.
So if you want to write a letter, make sure you use the proper format. Even if you have a perfect copy of the letter in your word processor, you need to be able to change it before you send it off. You dont’ need to write all your letter in the same order, but you should try to make it as clear as possible if the order is important.
