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From: terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad)
Newsgroups: soc.women
Subject: Re: Wanted: Business-letter greeting
Message-ID: <714@nrcvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Sep-86 18:17:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: nrcvax.714
Posted: Thu Sep 18 18:17:01 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Sep-86 03:31:50 EDT
References: <157@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> <1046@dadla.UUCP>
Reply-To: terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad)
Organization: Network Research Corp.  Oxnard,CA
Lines: 34

rob@dadla.UUCP (Rob Vetter) says:
>>I'm about to apply to graduate schools, so I'll be writing a lot of
>>letters to various admissions departments.  I would like to find non-
>>sexist alternatives to the usual greetings "Dear Sirs" and "Gentlemen"
>>which don't sound TOO forced.  Any suggestions are appreciated.
>
>	I used to use "People:" for the greeting.  Now, unless I
>	know who I'm writing to, I usually leave the greeting off
>	completely.

Ah, come on folks!  Remember that nine times out of ten a secretary
reads these things first.  Give her something to remember at the end
of the day.  Having worked in a university office, I still fondly
recall the unusual greetings people came up with.  ``Gentle sirs and
ladies'' was one of my favorites.  ``Howdy, y'all'' (from Texas, to be
sure) was another.  ``To Anyone in Power'' got a lot of attention too!
We presented these types of letters to our bosses with lots of
recommendations and on top of the stacks.

Of course, ``we'' did not work for Harvard, Yale or Princeton, just
little ole BYU, where we considered ourselves ``just plain folks''
and enjoyed the clever turn of a phrase.

-- 
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without a                                              Terry Grevstad
 ECNALG                                  Network Research Corporation
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