Do you explain the format at the top, or just start writing it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nName the shape in one short line and then go. A wish that opens with a recipe for the year ahead orients the reader in half a second and buys you the rest of the card; one that begins straight into ingredients makes her read three lines before she knows what she is holding, and in a stack of cards that is three lines too many. What you should never do is explain why you chose the format. I thought instead of a boring card I would try something different turns the gift into a description of the gift, and hands her the job of praising your idea rather than reading it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How long can one of these run before it stops being a gift and becomes homework?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe practical test is whether it reads out loud in under a minute, because at a party it probably will. That works out at five or six entries in a list, six or seven lines in a recipe, four or five in a forecast. Every extra item costs more than it adds: past a certain length the reader stops reading and starts scanning, and the best line, the one buried at number nine, never gets seen. If you have twelve ideas, use the five strongest and send the rest in a message the next morning. The exception is the letter opened a year from now, which is read alone and can run a full page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The card is going around the office. How far can a format go before it reads as unprofessional?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFormats travel better at work than sentiment does, which is why they are worth using there. A numbered list, a forecast for the year ahead, a set of directions for use \u2014 all stay on the safe side, because the joke is on the form and never on her. Three things to keep out: anything about her age, anything about her private life that she did not raise herself, and anything that reads as a complaint about the workplace signed by fifteen people. Agree the wording before the card starts moving, or the first signer writes a whole recipe and the twentieth writes two words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is not happy about the number. Does a playful format make that worse?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt usually makes it better, provided the format is not built on the number. A recipe, a forecast and a letter all work without the age appearing anywhere, because they are about the year ahead, which is neutral ground. What backfires is the shape that requires the count: fifty wishes for a fiftieth, a timeline of every decade, anything arranged around the figure she would rather not discuss. Then read your own draft for the sideways version, which is easy to miss \u2014 still, considering, and for someone your age are the age joke wearing a coat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no official list of American milestone birthdays. Which ones actually get marked?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nSixteen and twenty-one come first and belong to a different kind of party altogether. After that the decades carry it: thirty, forty, fifty, sixty. Sixty-five still registers because of retirement, including for women with no intention of retiring, and beyond seventy the count runs seventy-five and eighty, after which every year is worth marking again. What changes with the number is not the format \u2014 a recipe works at thirty and at eighty \u2014 it is the horizon. A wish at thirty can talk about what is being built over a decade; a wish at eighty talks about the coming year in specific terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A round number brings out the worst in card writing. Everybody reaches for the same three moves \u2014 a joke about the candles, a line about age being just a number, a wish for health and happiness \u2014 and by the end of the day she has eleven cards that could be shuffled without anyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":5806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2383],"tags":[],"moimportance":[],"motype":[],"moformat":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greetings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5809,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805\/revisions\/5809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5805"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=5805"},{"taxonomy":"motype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motype?post=5805"},{"taxonomy":"moformat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronx.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moformat?post=5805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}