When Email Fails

Booktryst showcases Lewis Carroll's thoughts on how to write a letter.

From the story...

"Here is a golden Rule to begin with. Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule! A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, 'I do it to save time.' A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend’s expense? Isn’t his time as valuable as yours?

"Years ago, I used to receive letters from a friend—and very interesting letters too—written in one of the most atrocious hands ever invented. It generally took me about a week to read one of his letters. I used to carry it about in my pocket, and take it out at leisure times, to puzzle over the riddles which composed it—holding it in different positions, and at different distances, till at last the meaning of some hopeless scrawl would flash upon me, when I at once wrote down the English under it; and, when several had been thus guessed, the context would help with the others, till at last the whole series of hieroglyphics was deciphered. If all one’s friends wrote like that, Life would be entirely spent in reading their letters!...

"...My second Rule is, don’t fill more than a page and a half with apologies for not having written sooner!"