Yesterday, I clicked on a link from @craneinsider, who I follow on Twitter, to his blog post about celebrities and people in the fashion industry sending written notes of congratulations to a magazine in celebration of its 10th anniversary. The magazine's slideshow of cards showed many examples where individuals had crossed out their names on their personalized stationery, Peter (aka The Crane Insider) indicated in his post that this was an indication that the note was of the most personal nature.
When I followed up with Peter, it became clear that neither of us (nor Google, for that matter) seemed to have a source for that rule of etiquette. But, clearly, people use the strikethrough on their personal correspondence.
So, I plead to you, dear readers, for assistance, have you heard of this practice? Do you have a source for the rule in etiquette? Both Peter and I are dying to know!
5 comments:
This is really fascinating! I was not familiar with this practice prior to this post - I hope that someone has some insight, I would love to know more!
I first saw a similar practice on fund solicitation letters: the typed formal salutation ("Dear Mr ___") was crossed out and replaced with a hand-written "(first name)".
Much more personal, don't you think? Similarly, the typed full signature was signed with just the first name of the sender.
This is a logical extension to personalize and "in-formalize" the printed format. No cite, just guess.
gary
When I worked as an assistant to a big-wig executive at an ad agency, he did this when sending a "professional" correspondence as a friend or aquaintance - to show a friendly relationship. Often these notes were on a smaller size paper, but he also did this on regular letterhead....more often around the holidays. It was crazy sometimes because I would type the note for him, cross out his name, and write his name on the letter myself, and mail it. How personal is that?! :)
Fascinating! Thank you for sharing your experiences. I suppose I understand that writing one's own name instead of just using the printed name is more personal. But, then, why not just use different paper without any print on it? I just can't wrap my head around the logic at this point.
James at 1:57
Because then you can't show people how cool you are to have your own personalized, engraved stationery.
gary
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