Professionals today definitely type more than they used do. As recently as a decade or so ago, most managers dictated or wrote by hand. Secretaries typed their letters. No self-respecting manager had a keyboard on his or her desk. Now, computer literacy — including a working knowledge of Word and Excel — is a basic requisite for managers, so is English literacy: being able to express oneself clearly in simple, direct language.

There have been, in my opinion, three important changes in written communication within the last few years affecting the art of letter writing:

First Because of time pressures and information overload, you have to work harder than ever to get and keep the reader’s attention. Online marketers know that simply changing the subject line can double response to an e-mail marketing message. How many e-mails do you delete each day without even opening them? How many letters do you open, read, but not respond or react to — because you are too busy? The second major change in writing is also related to information overload and time pressures: the shrinking of letter size. Not the size of the paper, but the size of the message, the key being: The shorter, the better. If you read books that reprint historically important letters (e.g., those of Lincoln), or books that collect the correspondence of nineteenth-century writers, you may be struck by how incredibly elegant, detailed, and long these letters are. The modern reader, however, has neither the time nor the patience for long letters.

Conciseness has always been a virtue in writing — and an enviable skill to be acquired. Philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is often quoted as saying to a correspondent: “Forgive me for the long letter; I did not have time to write a short one.” But in the twenty-first century, being concise has graduated from being a virtue to a necessity: If you don’t get to the point quickly, and get your message across in the fewest possible words, you’ll turn off your reader.

The third major change in letter writing is that correspondence has become less formal and increasingly conversational in style. Conversational style, like conciseness, has also long been a virtue in writing. But the advent of e-mail has accelerated the acceptance of conversational style and the banishment of “corporatese.” We don’t get buzzword laden messages about “thinking outside the box” or “shifting our paradigms” when we zing off our e-mails — we get right to the point: “Marketing plans are due today at 3:00 p.m., please add information focusing on new product development.” The sample letters in this website — and the guidelines for adapting them for your own use — reflect the modern style of letter writing: to the point, concise, and conversational. Although some can be copied merely verbatim, more often these sample letters can serve as models on which to base your own letters.

The specifics of your situation may require making changes—sometimes substantial— to the sample letters in this website. But the tone, style, pace, and organization of the sample letters should help you say what you want in most situations, most of the time, faster and with less effort than composing your own letters from scratch. After all, why reinvent the wheel when the tires have already been perfected in the laboratory, thoroughly inspected for quality control, and field tested in thousand of situations?