Dorothy Dix

The Sunday Mirror ran a column by venerable advice columnist Dorothy Dix on letter writing. Dix was the pen name of 85-year old Elizabeth Meriweather Gilmer. This week Time ran a profile of the journalist in celebration of the column's fiftieth anniversary. Gilmer also had been a crime reporter for Hearst but in 1920 she left New York for New Orleans to concentrate on her advice column. She retired in 1949, two years before her death.

On this day she wrote about her delight in receiving letters from bobby-soxers((she called them bobby-sockers) looking for advice on letter writing, evidence to her that the important art had not yet died in these decades before Twitter and Facebook. She advised her readers that, while handwritten letters were preferable, they should use a typewriter if their handwriting was poor. Never ever use a pencil unless you were stranded on a desert island and had no other writing implement at your disposal. Keep letters cheerful and personal-people already had read the newspapers. Never write love letters: it was too easy to succumb to the temptation to get gushy and write things that chambermaids and boy's mothers would laugh over and that your father might have to retrieve at blackmailer's prices. While it was cathartic to pour out your anger in a letter, you must never mail it or you most likely will come to regret it.