Special Report: Fundraising 101 Direct Mail

Overall, you want to strive for an informal, warm, conversational tone, because that’s what most people respond to. Use contractions. Use italics for emphasis. Vary your sentence length. Begin sentences with “and,” “but,” “so” and “or.” No, it’s not grammatically incorrect. Use fragments. (They are grammatically incorrect, but who cares? They’re conversational.) When you’re done writing, go back and reread it again. Does it sound like a letter written by a human being in the 21st century to another human being? When you can answer yes, you’re good to go.