About these letters



Some Observations about the Letters

Original spelling and punctuation was kept. Formatting is also original, except for most of Caroline’s letters. Caroline rarely used periods and many times her entire letter was just one L-O-N-G paragraph. To make it easier to read, I often inserted new paragraphs.

There are “peculiar” things that I noticed in these letters.

One, I love the creative hyphenation of words. When they came to the end of the line, regardless of where they were in a word, everyone just concluded the word on the next line. No pesky punctuation rules of where to break words with syllables.

Also, you’ll notice that “the” is used for the word “they.” This is not my typo—that is how they wrote it. “Dont” is “don’t” and there are many, many examples of how they creatively spelled different words. Lots of fun stuff to read.

Letter Format

Here is an example of what you’ll see on each letter. The line divides the data on the outside of the envelope from the actual letter. (Some of the posts have this dividing line; others do not.)


C.J. Peterson
Box 17 Logan              [Return address on envelope]
Utah

Miss Louise C. Peterson
2226 Chapel Street      [Addressee on the envelope]
Berkeley
California


     [Top portion of letter]                     N. Logan Ut. R#2 Box 17
                                                                        June 17—1923

My dear dear Daugther Lovis. [Greeting and beginning of letter]








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