Oh, my dear Print Futures peeps (and all you other aspiring writers out there). My generosity cup runneth over, and I am therefore going to share with you some of the wise wisdom I've picked up while working at the mag. Today I found myself at the crap end of the query pile. My beloved e-i-c keeps all the good ones to herself, and she makes the interns write the "sorry, loser" emails to all the misguided fools who think that they have a good idea.

I realized today that there are some lessons to be learned here, and shared. So we will begin with today's prizewinner. It begins "Hello Terry-Lynn, how are you today? I hope your having a bright sunny day!!"

Now. Let's analyze this. If we ignore the serial adjectives (is a comma necessary?) because no one understands those rules, we can focus on the basics. Sure, he spelled the e-i-c's name correctly. But the informality of "hello" just negates the bonanza of proper spelling. Then there's the comma splice. You can't just mash the salutation into the first line, even if that's the way your manic brain works. "How are you today?" is a separate sentence. So it needs a capital "h". And in the final sentence, it's not "your" but "you're", as in the contraction for "you are". It's very simple stuff, people. If you can't get the first lines right, can you reasonably expect the reader to assume that you'll get it together eventually?

To answer that question, I'll provide the closing paragraph. Please note that when this writer wrote "we", he was really just referring to himself (and maybe the voices in his head).

"So we Thank-You Terry-Lynn !!! We thank-you for taking a bit of time w/David & Lymphology. & please forgive me for misspelling your name in the other article I submitted to you Terry-Lynn. Lymphology is starting to really cook & I used to have 4 million hairs on the top of my head as opposed to what I got now."

Now that's how you close a query letter!

You have no idea how difficult it was to copy that word for word. I think that I sprained something.