Business English Part 73

9. Our forests should be preserved.

10. The waste of lumber by forest fires results from carelessness.

11. The waste of lumber in cutting railroad ties is too great.

12. The rotation of crops enriches the soil.

13. Apples are more easily gathered than cherries.

14. Efforts should be made to keep the birds in our city parks.

15. Every boy should learn a trade.

16. Peddlers should not be allowed to call their wares.

17. Great crowds gathered in the city during aviation week (or any celebration).

18. The electric toaster is good for hurry-up breakfasts.

19. Ironing with an electric iron is more convenient than with the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind.

20. The wireless apparatus makes sea voyages safer than before.

21. A mixed diet is best.

22. Cats should be exterminated because they spread disease.

23. The parcel post will decrease the profits of the express companies.

24. A good book is opened with expectation and closed with profit.

25. Merchants should charge for delivering purchases.

26. The object of the Child Welfare Exhibit is to promote the best interests of children.

27. One of the best enactments of our time is the Child Labor Law.

=Exercise 213--Smooth Connection=

We may as well confess at the beginning that smooth connection between sentences and paragraphs is a hard thing to learn. Primarily, it depends on clear thinking. In Exercise 135 we saw that the idea of one sentence must grow out of the idea of the preceding one. It is the same with paragraphs. The thought must develop gradually from one to the next.

Each paragraph, we know, represents a unit within the larger unit of the composition; each represents a division of thought. Not infrequently the thought of one division differs considerably from the thought of the next. The tying together of such units is sometimes hard. It may be done in one of the following ways:

1. By repeating at the beginning of the new paragraph or sentence part of the preceding paragraph or sentence.

2. By using p.r.o.nouns to refer to what has gone before.

3. By using connecting links, sometimes called _transition words_ because they indicate the transition from one division to the next.

Besides those mentioned in Exercise 135, we may use a numeral connection, as, _in the first place_, _in the second place_; or an expression much like a numeral, as, _furthermore_, _in the next place_; or an expression showing that an adverse idea is to be presented, as, _on the other hand_, _however_, _in spite of this_, _nevertheless_. But whatever you do, choose the right link, especially if you use such a one as _possibly_, _probably_, _perhaps_, _certainly_, _surely_. Use the one that expresses your idea exactly. Have none rather than the wrong one.

In the following the first and second paragraphs are connected according to (1) above; the second and third are connected according to (3) above.

There comes to every prosperous man a time when he wishes to know the best way of securing a steady income from his acc.u.mulated savings without the burden of responsibility of managing some property in order to gain his income. The merchant may not wish to put back into the business all the earnings he gets from it, and yet he wishes to prepare for his old age. The farmer may wish to give up active work, but he realizes how soon his broad acres may deteriorate through soil-robbery when he rents his property "on shares." With such a problem before him the thoughtful man makes an effort to _learn_ how to act to secure a good _income_ all his life.

One of the first things he _learns_, if he studies the situation carefully, is that there is a wide difference between an _income_ derived from one's business ability, such as the profit secured from running a store, factory, jobbing house, or farm, and the income which is derived as the result of money "working" by itself. In the first case, a man must of necessity keep up his business responsibilities; in the other, once he has selected a safe investment, practically all he has to do is to collect his income from time to time as it falls due. There is in the latter no depreciation of land, buildings, machinery, or the like; no insurance payments to worry about; no crop failures to consider.

_It is evident, then_, that if one wishes to put surplus money away--say the proceeds from the sale of a business or a farm--and get a steady income from it without bother or worry, the most important thing to consider is how to go about it to select something which, once purchased, will turn out to be a safe investment.

=Exercise 214=

In the following paragraphs taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's _The Philosophy of Nomenclature_, point out all the transition words that join (1) sentence to sentence, and (2) paragraph to paragraph:

To begin, then: the influence of our name makes itself felt from the very cradle. As a schoolboy I remember the pride with which I hailed Robin Hood, Robert Bruce, and Robert le Diable as my name-fellows; and the feeling of sore disappointment that fell on my heart when I found a freebooter or a general who did not share with me a single one of my numerous _praenomina_. Look at the delight with which two children find they have the same name. They are friends from that moment forth; they have a bond of union stronger than exchange of nuts and sweetmeats.

This feeling, I own, wears off in later life. Our names lose their freshness and interest, become trite and indifferent. But this, dear reader, is merely one of the sad effects of those "shades of the prison house" which come gradually betwixt us and nature with advancing years; it affords no weapon against the philosophy of names.

In after life, although we fail to trace its working, that name which careless G.o.dfathers lightly applied to your unconscious infancy will have been moulding your character and influencing with irresistible power the whole course of your earthly fortunes. But the last name is no whit less important as a condition of success. Family names, we must recollect, are but inherited nicknames; and if the _sobriquet_ were applicable to the ancestor, it is most likely applicable to the descendant also. You would not expect to find Mr. M'Phun acting as a mute or Mr.

M'Lumpha excelling as a professor of dancing.

Therefore, in what follows, we shall consider names, independent of whether they are first or last. And to begin with, look what a pull _Cromwell_ had over _Pym_--the one name full of a resonant imperialism, the other mean, pettifogging, and unheroic to a degree. Who would expect eloquence from _Pym_--who would read poems by _Pym_--who would bow to the opinions of _Pym_? He might have been a dentist, but he should never have aspired to be a statesman. I can only wonder that he succeeded as he did. Pym and Habakkuk stand first upon the roll of men who have triumphed, by sheer force of genius, over the most unfavorable appellations. But even these have suffered; and, had they been more fitly named, the one might have been Lord Protector and the other have shared the laurels with Isaiah. In this matter we must not forget that all our great poets have borne great names. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley--what a constellation of lordly words! Not a single commonplace name among them--not a Brown, not a Jones, not a Robinson; they are all names that one would stop and look at on a door-plate. Now, imagine if _Pepys_ had tried to clamber somehow into the enclosure of poetry, what a blot would that name have made upon the list! The thing is impossible. In the first place, a certain natural consciousness that men have would have held him down to the level of his name, would have prevented him from rising above the Pepsine standard, and so haply withheld him altogether from attempting verse. Next, the booksellers would refuse to publish, and the world to read them, on the mere evidence of the fatal appellation. And now, before I close this section, I must say one word as to _punnable_ names, names that stand alone, that have a significance and life apart from him that bears them.

These are the bitterest of all. One friend of mine goes bowed and humbled through life under the weight of this misfortune; for it is an awful thing when a man's name is a joke, when he cannot be mentioned without exciting merriment, and when even the intimation of his death bids fair to carry laughter into many a home.

So much for people who are badly named. Now for people who are _too_ well named, who go topheavy from the font, who are baptized into a false position, and who find themselves beginning life eclipsed under the fame of some of the great ones of the past. A man, for instance, called William Shakespeare could never dare to write plays. He is thrown into too humbling an apposition with the author of _Hamlet_. His own name coming after is such an anti-climax. "The plays of William Shakespeare?" says the reader--"O no! The plays of William Shakespeare c.o.c.kerill," and he throws the book aside. In wise pursuance of such views, Mr.

John Milton Hengler, who not long since delighted us in this favored town, has never attempted to write an epic, but has chosen a new path and has excelled upon the tight-rope. A marked example of triumph over this is the case of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rosetti. On the face of the matter, I should have advised him to imitate the pleasing modesty of the last-named gentleman, and confine his ambition to the sawdust. But Mr. Rosetti has triumphed. He has even dared to translate from his mighty name-father; and the voice of fame supports him in his boldness.

=Exercise 215=

Turn back to Exercise 210, 1. How are the different paragraphs that you have made connected?

CHAPTER XV

BUSINESS LETTERS

NOT long ago the head of one of the biggest mail order firms in this country said: "Business needs the boys and the girls. Do not let them think they can be but cogs in the great system of wheels. More to-day than at any previous time the world needs men and women who can speak and write _themselves_ into English. Four hundred million dollars is wasted every year in unprofitable advertising alone, and as much more in bad handling of good prospects and loss of customers through inefficient letters. We look to the future generation to conserve a part of this enormous loss. If a single page advertis.e.m.e.nt in a single issue costs $7500, what you say on that page is important. Look into any current magazine, and you will be tremendously impressed with the importance of English in this branch alone, not to mention its importance in letter writing."

There is no greater power in business to-day than the ability to use convincing English in correspondence and in advertising. Any one who can write good letters, letters that the reader feels he must answer, has success ahead of him, because the market of a good letter is practically unrestricted. Wherever a letter can penetrate, it may create desire for an article and make sales.

But what is a good letter? Nothing more than a bit of good English. Can you write clear, direct, crisp, yet fluent English? Then you can write good letters--but not till then.

In modern business the letter has become the advertiser, the salesman, the collector, and the adjuster of claims. An advertis.e.m.e.nt must be attractive; it must arouse the interest of the one who sees it. A salesman must understand human nature; he must forestall objections by showing the customer how he will gain by buying. The collector and the adjuster of claims must be courteous and at the same time shrewd. If a letter is to meet all of these requirements it cannot be dashed off at a moment's notice. It must be thought out in detail and written carefully to include all that should be expressed. This means, especially in a sales letter:

1. An unusually worded opening that puts the writer's affairs in the background and the reader's gain in the foreground. Begin with _you_, not _we_. The reader is interested in himself, his own progress, his own troubles, and not in the possessions of the writer, except as the writer can show that those possessions affect him.

3. A clear, simply worded explanation of the purpose of the letter.