The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [73]
My eighth Rule. When you say, in your letter, “I enclose cheque for £5,” or “I enclose John’s letter for you to see,” leave off writing for a moment—go and get the document referred to—and put it into the envelope. Otherwise, you are pretty certain to find it lying about, after the Post has gone!
Personal Letters
Longer than a thank-you note, a personal letter (or social note) has five parts and can be handwritten or typed.
The Heading: This consists of your address and the date, each on its own line, indented to the middle of the page. After the heading, skip a line. If you are writing on preaddressed stationery, just write the date.
The Greeting: This can be formal or informal—beginning with “Dear,” or just writing the person’s name (or even simply, “Hi”). Either way, the greeting ends with a comma, and you skip a line afterwards.
The Body: The main text of your letter. In this kind of letter, the beginning of each paragraph is indented, and no lines are skipped between paragraphs.
The Closing: After the body, skip a line and write your closing line, which is usually just a few words like “All best,” “Sincerely,” “Looking forward to seeing you,” “With love,” etc. Whatever you write, this line should end in a comma and should be indented the same amount as your heading.
The Signature Line: This is where you sign your name. If you are typing the letter, skip three lines after the closing and type your name there, then put your handwritten signature just above your printed name. If your letter contains a postscript, skip a line after the signature line, begin the postscript by writing “P.S.” and end it with your initials.
An additional postscript should be noted as P.P.S. rather than P.S.S., as it is a post (after) postscript and not a postscript script.
Reading Tide Charts
EVERY BEACH on the planet has a unique cycle of tides, and thus its own tide chart. Look for one in the local newspaper, or at a nearby marine store or surf shop.
Reading tide charts helps you pick the best times to go fishing, crabbing, or surfing. With boats, it helps to know what the water is doing, as paddling a canoe into a creek when the tide is trending low is a great deal harder than, say, swooping in with the rush of a coming high tide.
Tide charts come in different forms. Once you know the basics of high and low tide, water height, and moon phases, you’ll be able to read any tide chart.
FISHING: A NEW YORK TIDE CHART
This simple tide chart from Southold, New York, a fishing area, predicts tides for the first nine days of August 2006.
August 2006
Day A.M. P.M.
1 4:25 5:02
2 5:19 5:51
3 6:17 6:43
4 7:17 7:36
5 8:15 8:28
6 9:08 9:20
7 9:59 10:11
8 10:47 11:01
9 11:35 11:52
Plum Gut: minus 1 hour, 5 minutes.
Shinnecock Canal: plus 50 minutes.
Sag Harbor: minus 40 minutes.
• new moon
first-quarter moon (waxing moon)
full moon
three-quarter moon (waning moon)
This is a high tide chart because it’s primarily for fishing. When you fish, you wake up in the morning and before even opening your eyes you wonder, “When’s high tide?” High tide is when the fish are out and moving, whether on the incoming flood tide or the outgoing ebb tide. At least that’s what you hope. A smallprint note at the bottom of this chart mentions that low tide comes about six hours later.
The names and times beneath the chart explain how to calculate the tides for nearby beaches, since every bay and inlet will have slightly different tides.
Notice several things. First, high tide comes 50-60 minutes later each day. The tidal day is slightly longer than our regular 24-hour day, at 24 hours and 50 minutes. (Why? Because our regular days rely on the earth rotating around the sun, and tidal days rely on the moon rotating around the earth, which takes 50 minutes longer.)
Second, the tide chart lists the phases of the moon. During the first few days of August the moon will wax to a first-quarter crescent. The moon will be full by August 9th—and with any luck it will be a bulgingly orange late-summer moon, rising low and pumpkin-like