Letter Format Research Articles

The Couple's Reflecting Team: How Spoken and Written Reflections, Gender, and Stage of Therapy Impact Perceived Helpfulness

We investigated the addition of written reflections to a reflecting team format for couples who requested an initial evaluation or a consultation to an ongoing stuck therapy situation. The 17 couples who participated found the interview, spoken reflections, and written reflections all helpful. Men seemed to get more out of the letters than did women. In addition, in the letter format, they seemed to find suggestions for experiments to try at home more helpful than did women. Overall, men and women were more receptive to defining their relationship in dyadic terms when they read written reflections compared to hearing verbal reflections. Couples who came for an initial interview found the interview and written reflections more helpful than did couples who were in a stuck therapy situation. Our findings offer support for the addition of a letter to the couple's reflecting team consultation. Further, results highlight the importance of considering gender differences in the impact of verbal and written reflections and suggest that the reflecting team can be helpful to both couples initiating therapy and those in ongoing couple therapy.

Notes and Letters in Orthopaedic Surgery Revisited: Can Surgeons Change?

Outpatient clinic letters are a widely used and effective means of communication between doctors and nurses. In the literature there was an absence of professional guidelines detailing how outpatient letters should be constructed. A previous study highlighted the importance of effective communication by identifying information deemed important by clinicians and recording it in a structured letter format. General practitioners (GPs) and orthopaedic surgeons perceived diagnosis, treatment, management plan, date of injury, current condition and findings on physical examination to be most important. Nursing staff favoured a clear management plan, particularly any requirement for investigations on arrival at clinic.

Becoming Whole: A Letter to a Young, Miseducated Black Teacher

The author uses this conceptual paper to present her personal narrative of transformation from miseducated (schooled) to educated (cultural broker) as a pretext to explore miseducation among young Black teachers. The author’s personal transformation comes in response to the neglect of teacher educators to attend to our few African American preservice teachers. Using a letter format, this paper places a particular focus on African American teachers and teacher educators, who agonize over how to transmit culture when they themselves have been miseducated.

The Appearance of Brief Communications in JASN

With this issue of JASN , we introduce a new feature for original manuscripts, the Brief Communication. These articles are short, about 1500 words, and written in letter format followed by concise methods and no more than four figures; some of the dataset may be submitted supplemental to the

Fatherhood on My Mind

SUMMARY This essay uses an academic letter format to address the topic of fatherhood through the personal perspective of a single, middle-aged, multi-ethnic, gay man. After providing auto-ethnographic reflections of childhood and family life, a survey of influential popular cultural texts and academic literature on fatherhood and parenting is provided. Finally, the letter ends with an in depth examination of the international film Bear Cub/Cachorro, along with concluding auto-ethnographic reflections and thoughts on the author's readiness and desire to become a father.

Blood pressure, obesity and cognitive function: the answers lie in the literature

We thank Van Boxtel and co-workers for their interest in our work. We agree that the most likely explanation for our discrepant findings is methodological differences between our investigations. Given the space constraints of the letter format, we hope that the authors will choose to publish their work as a full or brief report so that more extensive consideration can be given to the issues raised. In this way, their data can contribute further to the literature by inclusion in future reviews or meta-analyses.

Letters and Notes in Orthopaedic Surgery

Accurate written communication is essential in orthopaedic surgery. Incomplete and poorly structured letters can lead to poor knowledge of a patient's diagnosis. Structured and traditional letter formats were compared for speed of reading and preference by general practitioners (GPs), consultants, registrars and out-patient nursing staff. In addition, out-patient clinic letters and notes were analysed and compared for speed of reading and ease of assimilating information and content. There was overwhelming preference for the structured letter format. This style of letter could be read significantly more quickly with information better assimilated and relevant data included more frequently. However, only 26% of letters generated contained a complete set of information sought by GPs and hospital staff. Structured letters are better in orthopaedics because it is easier to access the contents. The structured format disciplines medical staff to address essential information. Even with a structured format the majority of letters omitted essential information. Training in letter writing is necessary. A structured letter format next to dictating machines might improve the quality of letters generated.

Early Development of Language by Hand: Composing, Reading, Listening, and Speaking Connections; Three Letter-Writing Modes; and Fast Mapping in Spelling

The first findings from a 5-year, overlapping-cohorts longitudinal study of typical language development are reported for (a) the interrelationships among Language by Ear (listening), Mouth (speaking), Eye (reading), and Hand (writing) in Cohort 1 in 1st and 3rd grade and Cohort 2 in 3rd and 5th grade; (b) the interrelationships among three modes of Language by Hand (writing manuscript letters with pen and keyboard and cursive letters with pen) in each cohort in the same grade levels as (a); and (c) the ability of the 1st graders in Cohort 1 and the 3rd graders in Cohort 2 to apply fast mapping in learning to spell pseudowords. Results showed that individual differences in Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading Comprehension, and Written Expression are stable developmentally, but each functional language system is only moderately correlated with the others. Likewise, manuscript writing, cursive writing, and keyboarding are only moderately correlated, and each has a different set of unique neuropsychological predictors depending on outcome measure and grade level. Results support the use of the following neuropsychological measures in assessing handwriting modes: orthographic coding, rapid automatic naming, finger succession (grapho-motor planning for sequential finger movements), inhibition, inhibition/switching, and phonemes skills (which may facilitate transfer of abstract letter identities across letter formats and modes of production). Both 1st and 3rd graders showed evidence of fast mapping of novel spoken word forms onto written word forms over 3 brief sessions (2 of which involved teaching) embedded in the assessment battery; and this fast mapping explained unique variance in their spelling achievement over and beyond their orthographic and phonological coding abilities and correlated significantly with current and next-year spelling achievement.

A Study of Business Letter Features

As part of their work, forensic document examiners examine word processed letters. The purpose of this study, the first of its kind, was to determine how common or rare certain features are in word-processed business letters and if any of these features could determine the author or source. Initially, 114 original business letters were obtained that were dated from 1999 through 2003. Specific features of the letters were selected for examination. These features were letter format, type style, the point size of the font, margin spacing to ascertain the use or nonuse of the default margins for Word (1.25 in. nonjustified) and the default margins for WordPerfect (1 in. nonjustified). In addition, the research involved the examination of the right margins to determine if they were justified or not and the use of the comma or colon in the salutation of the letter. The features of each letter were independently examined by the authors and the findings documented. As expected, several features were found to be very common. For example,full block format was used on 48% of the letters followed by the semi-block with 39%. The Times Family of fonts was used on 67% of the letters. Font point size 12 was the most popular with 70%. The nonjustified default margins were widespread with 67% and the colon was the overwhelming favorite in the salutation with 79%. There were some unexpected findings that could possibly lead to the identification of a source or typist.

Coming Out as “We 3”

Using an academic letter format, I use a blended-method-ological approach of personal ethnography and qualitative case study to assess the three-partner, gay male relationship and the role of parental support. In working to understand better the relational “We 3,” I first provide an account of my relational experience with two other men. I discuss the process of our coming together and then make a methodological turn to provide insights from both e-mail and face-to-face interviews with one set of parents who have supported their gay son in his three-partner relationship. As I, personally, have not had an in-depth conversation with my own parents regarding this issue, I use the parental case study to bridge an academic conversation regarding the negotiation of what might be termed a second or relational coming out process with parents. Finally, I discuss how insights from the first, personal coming out process provided the parents with tools to keep the conversation going and to support their son's relational coming out as a “We 3.”

About Writing: A Letter to Stacie: Writing as a grandmother to her granddaughter, the author reflects on her wishes for the kind of writing classrooms she hopes her granddaughter will experience when she goes to school.

This article provides an overview of what makes a good writing workshop through a grandmother’s wishes for her own grandchild and, by implication, for all children. Written as a letter to her granddaughter, the grandmother reflects on the kinds of writing classrooms she hopes her granddaughter will experience when she goes to school, specifically classrooms that will sustain the child’s love for writing while helping her to write more effectively. Using a letter format and the tender tone of a grandmother, the author provides readers with a look at the “big picture” of what really matters for children as writers.

Dear Saints, Dear Stella: Letters Examining the Messy Lines of Expectations, Stereotypes, and Identity in Higher Education

The following article focuses on Latino students’ difficulties with higher education because of dual constructions of identity from and toward the Anglo mainstream. First, the article addresses Other perception: the potential problems Latino students (Mexican Americans) encounter in higher education based on how others perceive their individual and group identity. Second, it addresses self-perception: the contradictory expectations that Mexican Americans have of the mainstream in higher education. The discussion of these issues is presented in a letter format that primarily speaks to audiences outside the mainstream.

Dear Saints, Dear Stella: Letters Examining the Messy Lines of Expectations, Stereotypes, and Identity in Higher Education

The article focuses on Latino students' difficulties with higher education because of double construction of identity from and toward the Anglo mainstream in the U.S. It addresses other perception, the potential problems Latino students, Mexican American, encounter in higher education based on how others perceive their individual and group identity. It also addresses self-perception, the contradictory expectations that Mexican Americans have of the mainstream in higher education. It presents the discussion in a letter format that primarily speaks to audiences outside the mainstream.

Improving doctors' letters

Information contained in letters of referral and reply often does not meet the information needs of letter recipients. Missing reports of previous investigations and insufficient detail in the referral letter to specialists are the most serious and common problems. General practitioners prefer structured, computer-generated letters to unstructured, dictated letters. Referring surgeons and GPs identify delay in receiving the reply letter and insufficient detail as relatively common problems after a new patient consultation. They want the reply letter to describe the proposed treatment, expected outcomes and any psychosocial concerns, yet these items are often omitted. A letter content and format prompt card has the potential to enhance the quality of correspondence between medical specialists and referring doctors. Specialist medical bodies should consider preparing prompt cards (setting out preferred information content and format for letters) to distribute to their members.

Ergonomics guidelines for designing electronic mail addresses

The aim was to design a human-centred electronic mail (e-mail) address system based on networking technology and cognitive ergonomics. Based on the background literature and the results of users' survey, a conceptual model is developed for designing e-mail addresses. This model consists of e-mail address components of formats, domain length, meaningfulness, orientation and information type pertaining to recall, information association and categorization. Five hypotheses were proposed to test the conceptual model, and four experiments were conducted with 85 participants to test the hypotheses. The dependent variables were performance time, error rate and degree of satisfaction, and the independent variables were components of the e-mail addresses. The main results indicate that for a recall task, significantly lower total performance time (26.2%) and error rate (75%) were found for the hybrid formats (digits and letters) than for the letter format, and up to four characters was the best single domain length. For an information association task, embedding both geographical and organizational information significantly decreased the response time (10.9%) in comparison with only embedding organizational information. For a categorization task, embedding both geographical information and organizational information significantly decreased response time (40.7%) in comparison with only embedding organizational information. This research demonstrates the importance of human-centred design and provides guidelines in effectively designing e-mail addresses.

Son of God, Seed of David: Paul's Messianic Exegesis in Romans 2:3-4

The opening of Paul's letter to Rome broadly follows the traditional Greco-Roman letter format: sender to receiver, Xaipatv; but within this framework, Paul inserts an unusual elaboration of the gospel under his selfcharacterization as the letter's author. Martin Hengel observed in 1975: more has been written about [Rom 1:3-4] than about any other New Testament text.I Even if Hengel's statement no longer holds true statistically, this confessional fragment in Paul's letter to Rome continues to command and deserve scholarly attention. The state and terms of twentieth-century discussion of Rom 1:3-4 were canonically formulated by Rudolf Bultmann:

The effect of abnormal eye movements upon visual acuity

Purpose: Abnormal fixational eye movements such as those which occur in nystagmus can have a deleterious effect upon visual acuity measurement which is difficult to determine. The repeat letter format of the Regan Repeat Letter charts (RRL) is designed to measure visual acuity independently of abnormal eye movements, and should give higher visual acuity scores than linear test charts in subjects with fixational instability. In the present study RRL and Glasgow Acuity Cards (GAC) were used to determine visual acuity losses arising from fixational instability.Methods: Monocular visual acuity was measured in five subjects with congenital nystagmus using both GAC and RRL while eye movements were continuously recorded using an infrared limbal reflection eyetracker.Results: Mean visual acuity obtained with RRL was significantly higher (P < 0.01) than that obtained with GAC. A significant correlation (P < 0.01) was observed between the amplitude of the nystagmus and the visual acuity obtained using GAC. There was no significant correlation between the amplitude of the nystagmus and visual acuity measured using RRL.Conclusions: The results show that RRL can measure visual acuity independently of abnormal fixational eye movements. Fixational instability in nystagmus is a limiting factor in visual acuity measurements obtained using a linear test chart format.

Communication between primary care physicians and consultants.

Optimal communication between primary care physicians and consultants includes transfer of relevant clinical information, including the patient's perspectives and values, and provides a means of collaboration to provide meaningful and health-promoting interventions. Communication difficulties arise because of lack of time, lack of clarity about the reason for referral, patient self-referral, and unclear follow-up plans. Also, primary care physicians and consultants may have different core values and may have little day-to-day contact with each other. Poor communication leads to disruptions in continuity of care, delayed diagnoses, unnecessary testing, and iatrogenic complications. Changes in the health care system offer the opportunity for improved collaboration between physicians by creating smaller administrative units within large health care systems that facilitate contact between primary care physicians and consultants; incorporation of discussions of uncertainty, patient preferences, and values into referral letters; adoption of a friendlier consultant letter format; and the improvement of the transfer of clinical data.

German Memo and Letter Style

This article describes German correspondence styles in order to assist American managers. In the coming years, more and more American managers will find that they must correspond with their German counterparts either as colleagues within international organizations or as associates representing collaborative and competing businesses. The article explains typical conventions of both memo and letter formats, emphasizing the need to appreciate differences between formal and informal modes of communication. American managers who know and respect these differences can communicate more clearly and persuasively with their German contacts.

Post-Session Letters: Reverberations in the Family Treatment Systems

Since 1978, the authors have used a personal letter written to the family following each therapy session. This post-session intervention is used to increase the impact of therapy. It also serves as a record-keeping tool, replacing the majority of the case notations. With the family's consent, copies are sent to other involved professionals in agencies such as the Department of Human Services, Juvenile Court Services, school system or residential treatment facilities for the purpose of increasing interagency cooperation and coordination. This paper explores the theoretical tenets underlying the development and use of post-session letters, the letter format, and reverberations in the family and professional systems.