Accepting rejection

I received a letter of rejection yesterday from the City of Krum Public Library, where I applied for an assistantship position to garner some résumé-building library experience while I'm in library school. I was about to toss the letter when I realized that Ms. Rebecca Ivey, library director and University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science master's program alumna, punctuated the salutation with a semicolon.

Of course, formal business letter salutations are most often punctuated with a colon or, in the case of an "open punctuation" letter, use no punctuation at all after the salutation. Informal letters use commas, but to my knowledge, a semicolon is never appropriate. There are plenty of resources for proper business letter formatting, so if my readers are curious, they can poke around in university online writing center sites or check the library--or even ask a librarian--for assistance.

And, Ms. Ivey, if you happen to read my blog, I have a word of advice: next time you need to send out letters of rejection, consider hiring a technical editor. I think you have my number.