Add News Value in Business Letter :

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WHAT you consider just common things may be news to other people. For instance, here is the way a laundry man makes news out of his methods of doing work.


“Dear Mr. Norton,


“You’ll often find among your new laundered collars, some that are scratched or blistered on the seam. (That is, unless we do your laundry work.) It is not a necessary evil, either. The explanation is simple. The seams of a double-fold or wing point should be evenly dampened before folding. Otherwise it blisters or cracks. We have a machine to dampen those seams. It must dampen evenly, for it does it with mechanical precision. So you will get no cracked collars back from us.


“Just step to the telephone and call up Main 427, and your laundry will be ready for use whenever you want it.”


And here is another letter that gets the idea, this from a bird fancier.


“Dear Sir,


“We have just received a consignment of St. Andreasberg Roller Canaries which we can offer you at the special price of $3.50. These birds are really a second grade of Golden Opera Singer. During their course of training some birds make mistakes—others take up false notes. We call such birds St. Andreasberg Rollers. They sing just as often as the first grade birds and they all sing at night, but each bird has some slight imperfection in his song.”


Now, personally, I have no possible use for a canary, but this man almost sold me a bird simply because, with what was news to me, he got me deeply interested.


Just keep this matter of news value in mind when you run through the letters that come to your desk tomorrow. Although you may never have stopped to analyze it before you will find that the man who tells yousomething new, the man that throws into his message some bit of live, up-to-now, information-that man gets your interest.


Put the idea to use yourself. You will find news making your dull dry correspondence sparkling with life. You will find it giving new pulling power to letters that have been going to the discard.

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