Letters

Wrote a lengthy letter for certain bureaucratic problem. This is not my cup of tea, but, as people often say, part of my salary pays for it.

Many of my friends know that I have dyslexia and could not stand any letter with more than three lines. Nonetheless this disability reminds me to keep most of my letters short and comprehensible to any recipient with a similar medical condition - which means the majority of our general population.

After all, why do you need three pages for a trivial matter if a president of the United States (alas, that's Richard Nixon) wrote his resignation letter in just one line:

"I hereby resign the office of President of the United States."

It also reminds me of our sister department in the era of the Knights of the Round Table. In one incident, the King wrote the following letter to fire one of his professors:

"Because of well known reasons, Professor X will leave the XX University with immediate effect."

And his Highness had sufficient foresight to provide a Chinese translation of the letter for his faculty staff:

"基於人所共知的理由,X教授已離開X大學."

What else do you have to say ?

PS. The latter letter was shown to me by the man who still had his moustache, when I was his trainee - as an example of how to write simple letters.