Wishes

Occasion writing is harder than it looks. The words are expected, which is exactly the problem: a birthday message, a wedding card or a condolence note all arrive alongside dozens of others saying nearly the same thing, and the ones that get kept are the ones that could only have been written by you about this person.

Everything in this section is grouped by who you are writing to rather than by occasion alone, because a message to your mother and a message to your best friend are not interchangeable even on the same day. Within each page the lines are sorted by tone — heartfelt, short, funny — so you can match the register you need without reading past forty that are wrong for it.