In 1984, towards the end of my time at university, I drafted a letter applying for a job as an advertising copywriter. I was a history student, so I showed it to a languid friend who was reading English. He read it while lying on a sofa one sunny morning. “Well,” he said, wafting it back to me, “there’s too many words in it.”
I picked it up off the floor and read the opening: “Dear sir or madam, I wonder whether, by any chance, I might prevail on you …”
