3. Form letters and form, paragraphs.—Many business concerns can use the form-letter and the form-paragraph system to good advantage. The abuse of this system is responsible for the unwar ranted condemnation it has received. One mail-order house in New York City handles efficiently about 90 per cent of all its correspondence by means of form paragraphs.
One often hears: "our letters could not possibly be written that way. We have to write an individual letter in each case. You can't write an effective let ter unless you adapt it to the individual case," and so on. Often, it is true, forms have been tried and "they failed," but in most cases the failure was due to lack of the necessary patience required to create a complete and really efficient set of form letters or paragraphs.
The use of form letters is much more restricted than the use of form paragraphs. A folio of form paragraphs may be useful in writing the bulk of the more difficult types of business letters. But such a folio of paragraphs cannot be created overnight, nor can it be done in a year. Several years are usually required to develop a form-paragraph system to the point where it will enable the firm to take care of a large part of the correspondence completely and adequately. The task of creating an efficient system of form paragraphs is never wholly completed.
4. When the use of form paragraphs is inadvisable. —While the failure of the form-paragraph system is usually due to the fact that it is not given a fair trial, doubtless it would not pay many business houses to take the time and to incur the expense necessary to create an efficient set of form paragraphs. The use of a complete form-paragraph system may not be advisable when the amount of a concern's corre spondence is relatively small and there are not many letters of one kind to write; or when the business is of such a kind that each letter must be handled dif ferently from all the rest, especially when the cost of correspondence is a small item in the expense budget in proportion to sales, or to profits, or to the cost of getting or doing business—as it is in a contractor's office, or in a machinery supply house, for instance.
Yet there are few offices where form paragraphs could not be used advantageously, at least in a limited way.
5. When the use of form paragraphs is advisable. —Of course, the skill and judgment required in mak ing efficient use of form paragraphs is largely de pendent upon the completeness and thoroness with which the fund of paragraphs covers the cases. The more efficient the folio of form paragraphs, the easier it is to make effective use of it. In the case of one company, for instance, 400 different paragraphs are prepared. About 200 of these are active. Nearly all the firm's letters are composed from the material in these 200 paragraphs, which are so well prepared that any bright girl can use them to write an effec tive letter. In order to do this, she has, of course, to memorize, not the wording, but the thought and the purpose of each paragraph. Definiteness and unity of purpose in each paragraph is naturally of primary importance.
6. Slip form paragraphs are used in connection with dictation to a stenographer —especially when the writer reads form paragraphs as an aid in his dictation—there is not much saving in time and expense, altho such use of form para graphs may now and then be advisable. But when hundreds of letters are written daily and the expense is an important item, it pays to make direct use of form paragraphs. At least one big concern has suc ceeded in developing such a complete and efficient stock of form paragraphs that it can use the so-called "slip" system of writing letters. The paragraphs are printed on slips of paper about the size of a half-sheet letterhead. A letter is composed merely by picking the proper slips and clipping them together. So thoro is the development of this system that nearly all the correspondence in this concern is effectively han dled by means of it.
The girls that do the "picking"—not the writing— of letters for the concern just mentioned, are care ful to retype on new slips the paragraphs that need alteration. So complete is the supply of paragraphs, however, that alterations are necessary only in a slight percentage of cases.