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>
> Bonnie Granat wrote,
> >... what keeps us from discarding any other standard (assuming, as most of
> >us do, that standards originate in the need for clarity)? How about I just
> >stop using a colon after the salutation in a business letter?
>
> The modern convention for business letters in Australia _is_ to have no
> colon or any other punctuation after the salutation in a business letter,
> though many people still use the old convention, which was a colon followed
> by a dash -- a ghastly combination, in my opinion.
>
No kidding? I don't get letters from Australia. Then there's no wonder you
feel as you do about the other thing! Thanks for the clarification. I see that
it's attempting to share a language that is causing all this grief. We are
often discussing not one language but three or more dialects' conventions.
What a waste of time. Do you know what I mean? I've seen UK letters, and they
seem to be similar enough to US letters, so I assumed (there I went, eh?) that
the convention was universal, although I had no reason to, really.
Hasta la vista,
___________________________
Bonnie Granat
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