ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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If you were to write a letter, who would you write it to? [Person writing a letter]

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Sorry, they have to be real people.

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The Post Office won’t deliver correspondence to Albus Dumbledore.

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Sorry to break it to you. [Man hands over letter to post office worker]

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And…how do you even begin to write a letter?

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Is there some sort of letter fairy who shows up outside your bedroom window and whispers [Boy sleeping and letter fairy appears at the window]

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the first few brilliant words into your ear?

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Sadly, no.

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But don’t stress.

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Writing a letter is actually quite simple, as long as we know…and follow…the rules.

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First, we start by writing the date in the upper right hand corner. [Arrow points to date in a letter]

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Easy enough.

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Second, we write our salutation.

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A salutation is a greeting.

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We might start with “Dear “blank”…and no, we don’t actually write “blank.”

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We’d fill it in with the name of the person we’re writing to.

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Or…we could write “To “blank”” or “Dearest “blank”” or “My mortal

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enemy “blank””, depending on how we want to address the recipient of our letter.

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Then comes the body of our letter.

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Most of the time we’ll want to start with a question directed to the person we’re [Boy sitting at a table and arrow points to question]

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writing to.

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Like…if we were writing to our grandmother, we might write:

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“Dear Grandma, How have you been lately?

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I hope you’ve been healthy and happy.”

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Depending on the state of her eyesight, don’t forget that we may need to write a bit bigger [Grandma reads a letter]

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than usual…

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We also might want to tell the person we’re writing to what we’ve been doing lately.

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We could write: “I’ve been doing well in school.

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I’m in 3rd grade now, and we’re learning all about writing letters.”

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It conveys some information, and it’s certainly a true story…

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When we’re finished with the body of our letter, we should always wrap things up with [Batman grabs letter from post office]

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a kind thought…unless we’re writing to our sworn enemy, of course.

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Something like:: “I hope you are having a great week, and

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I hope to hear from you soon!”

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Yeah…always guilt ‘em into writing your back.

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And don’t forget that we need to sign our name at the bottom.

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Grandma is confused enough as it is… [Grandma approaches post office desk]

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