When you begin a letter with "Dear Sirs", you must end with "Yours faithfully", whereas if you begin with "Dear Mr. Doe", you must end with "Yours sincerely". Is that correct?

Don’t worry, I’ve already found the answer somewhere else.

I trust the answer you found was "yes"?

BTW, you should only start "Dear sirs" if the adressee is a plural, otherwise you should start "Dear sir".

J

Hi Katy.

To Whom It May Concern is non gender specific, but I think it sounds, well, crappy. I use "Dear Sir or Madam" if writing to an anonymous party to whom I wish to show respect. Once upon a career I was in HR and would get resumes addressed simply "Dear Sir". Those were generally filed under G (garbage). Anyone who assumed the hiring executive was a man just exasperated me.

I tend to use the same trick Uncle Sam used to use on draft induction papers:

Greetings.

- PW
who thinks the whole gender thing is silly, except in cases where it’s womandatory  ;D

cut Right through the cr*p

Well thank you, ma’m. Although I have to say that I think I generate about as much as I cut.  ;D

- PW

who started out 25 years ago writing copy and now cuts a lot more than he writes  :)

[quote author=KatyBr link=board=grammar;num=1052745579;start=0#5 date=05/12/03 at 18:29:49]But this used to be du rigeur eh?

This is exactly what I was thinking whilst I read this thread.  When I graduated from high school in 1987, we were taught that the author should use the masculine pronouns when gender was either unknown or unimportant.

(That last part is what confuses me about the feminist movement’s desire to require the feminine pronoun as a means to ‘empower’ women.  Why in the world, I ask, would anyone want to be part of an exclusive group of unimportant men? )

The point is, I’m not all that old (I’m not!  even by Silver’s standards! ), and even as recently as 1987 our institutions of lower learning were instructing the students to utilize the generic masculine pronoun…

Should we punish people who are merely doing as they were instructed?  Beyond that, it would have been quite the spectacle to address a letter with "Dear Sir or Madam" (and don’t even think about "Dear Madam or Sir"—ladies first and all that jazz, but let’s abide by reason! ), just 50 years ago!

This has been a tongue-in-cheek commentary, prompted by lack of adequate sleep.  (If you want to have a good gender-wars discussion, let’s yap about the ignoble toilet seat! LOL!)

Now, in all seriousness, I’ve never heard before what was discussed earlier—to wit, the use of ‘Sincerely’ as a closing in a letter addressed to an individual, and ‘Yours faithfully’ as a closing to a group of people.  Can anyone shed any light on that little tidbit?

-Tim
who, in the style of our infamous constributors KatyBr and Palewriter, shall take a moment to state that he is not a feminist-basher, honest!

an awfully young whippersnapper

Hrumph.

- PW
who likes the postscript mode of communication  :)

Au contraire, Madam Katy… Age doesn’t define the infamous.

-Tim
who likes the sound of whippersnapper... maybe I’ll keep thinking that and avoid latter visits to my chiropractor!

Us old fuddyduddies need to keep our ferkin traps shut lest (nice word) they reinvoke the old tradition of throwing old people off of cliffs.

In Swedish lore, there was an "ättestupe" (old-people’s abyss) into which us infamous types were cast willy-nilly. Presumably to make room for the younger whippersnappers.

- PW
who works almost exclusively with whippersnappers

I simply had to reply to myself (a sign of old age?) concerning the word "lest".

Here’s what the AHD has to say about it:

CONJUNCTION: For fear that: tiptoed lest the guard should hear her; anxious lest he become ill.  

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old English (th) ls the, (whereby) less that, so that not : ls, less; see less + the, relative conjunction.

A conjunction that’s rich with such meaning. Awesome.

- PW
who is a mazed

[quote author=Tim Ward link=board=grammar;num=1052745579;start=0#10 date=05/13/03 at 17:56:28]
The point is, I’m not all that old (I’m not!  even by Silver’s standards! )...

Actually, previous comments on another thread aside, none of the frequent contributors to this website are particularly old according to the standards I really use. That is, my parents.  ;D

Gee Tim, you’re not that old, you’re only about twice my age.

~Silver, who likes any excuse to use this smiley that Katy found: http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung/lachen/laughing-smiley-014.gif

Afternote: Although it was Katy from whom I [s]stole[/s] borrowed the smiley, apparently it’s from iCYBELLE’s bag of tricks.

none of the frequent contributors to this website are particularly old

Exactly, Silver. (I think she’s buttering us up for something.)

- PW
who’s about the same age as Communist China and sometimes feels it  :)