A correspondence of mine sends out letters formatted the following way. He says it’s correct, or at least “a” correct way, using some criteria he won’t tell me. He just claims it’s correct. I find it totally confusing but would like the Dope’s input, maybe this is proper Archaic Society Typesetter Style or the proper style for some deceased civilization?
Dear so and so:
Body of letter, talk talk talk, blah, oh look a comet.
Sincerely,
Blue Beetle
Terrible Superhero
<signature of Metatron>
Metatron
Voice of God
If you got this letter, assuming the signature isn’t immediately legible, who would you think this letter is from? The first person? The second?
Personally, I think it’s totally confusing, even if you can decipher the signature. I’ve never seen it addressed from 2 people like that before. I think it’s crazy, and only inertia keeps him from changing the style.
I don’t follow. Is the letter actually from Blue Beetle or Metatron? And whichever one it is from, what is the relevance of the other one? What is the presence of the other name supposed to be conveying?
The closest I’ve seen to this is when a PA writes a letter on behalf of the person they are PA to, but that should look like:
That’s exactly the point, it’s confusing. You can’t tell if it’s from the Blue Beetle or Metatron (for the record, the letter is from Metatron). The relevance of the other one is, using my example, the organization in which Metatron belongs to is headed by the Blue Beetle. To put it simply:
Sincerely,
The boss
<signature of assistant>
The assistant
Methinks the assistant is trying to name drop the boss as a way of legitimizing the letter or making it seem more important. And for the record, there also is no language saying it’s “From the Boss, per Assistant”. It’s simply 2 names, signed by the assistant. FYI, the Blue Beetle isn’t even aware of the letter. I find it icky that Metatron, from my point of view, is trying to legitimize his correspondence by making it seem like the Blue Beetle is aware of the letter.
OK, well he’s right in that it is valid in concept but not execution. IMO it certainly ought to have the “per” in there, and the boss’s details after the assistant’s name rather than before.
but I’ve always seen some indication that the assistant is actually signing the letter. Although in my agency it’s fairly common for the boss not to know about that specific letter- there are twenty or thirty of them signed a day for me by my subordinates.
If an assistant is preparing a letter for the boss to go out under the boss’s authority, it is written as if it were written by the boss. The assistant doesn’t get credit.
In the old days when secretaries typed letters for their bosses, it would always be signed as the boss. The secretary’s name never appeared, even if the boss never touched the letter. The closing would look something like this:
Yours truly,
<handwritten signature>
Fred Boss
FB/si
Where FB were the initials of the boss, and si were the initials of the secretary who took dictation and typed the letter.
Also
cc: Horace U. Rodinnon
if it was typed with carbon paper and another sheet of paper.
Actually, per means “through, with, by means of”, so “John per Mary” would seem to mean that John wrote the letter through or by means of Mary, i.e. that the letter is written on John’s authority, though he got Mary to organise it and sign it. In other words, John per Mary properly means the opposite of what you suggest.
In the dear dead days beyond recall that were my youth, the convention was to sign such letters, if Mary was the authority, “John per pro. Mary”, or sometimes “John p.p. Mary”. This was short for per procurationem, “through the procuration of”, i.e. Mary got John to sign this letter. John’s signature appears, but Mary is the authority. A reply to this letter would be addressed to Mary, not John.
Somewhere along the line, through the general decline of civilisation, this got shortened by some to “John per Mary”. Presumably they had no idea what per meant, and so were unaware that they were indicating a reversal of the earlier meaning.
Actually, p.p. is used inconsistently both ways and I’ve been unable to find any authority that clearly sanctions one over the other. As I recall, either order could be used (“Fred Boss p.p. Jack Secretary” or “Jack Secretary p.p. Fred Boss”) with the proper meaning dependent on the declension of the words in Latin when the full Latin phrase is spelled out. Both forms were used with the full Latin, and both forms continued to be used when the Latin began to be abbreviated and the declension could no longer be seen.
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it was the names that were declined to show who was signing for whom. People used to Latinize their names so that they could be declined according to Latin grammar rules. Anyway, word order isn’t terribly important in heavily inflected languages like Latin.
In any event, attaching someone’s name to a letter without that person’s permission is a serious offence that could certainly lead to firing in some situations and, it seems to me, may even lead to criminal charges of fraud or misrepresentation.
Indeed. But you could usually tell who was who from the context - one name is that of an assistant, the other that of the chief executive - or simply by looking at whose signature appeared; that person is the underling.
But the same ambiguity doesn’t arise with the “John per Mary” form. Per governs the noun which follows it, not the noun which precedes it. If John is the boss, the options are “John per Mary” or “per Mary John”. "“Mary per John” unambigously means that Mary is acting through John.
I have never heard it to mean anything other than “through the agency of”.
So if you’re Jane Doe and Fred Bloggs is your boss, and you’re signing a letter from him, the correct form is
Fred Bloggs, p.p. Jane Doe.
i.e. Fred Bloggs, through the agency of Jane Doe.
I remember learning this when I was a kid from my mother’s “Pan Guide to Letter-Writing”. It stuck in my mind because it seemed backward - you would assume that “p.p.” means “on behalf of”, but it doesn’t. Presumably like so many things, it’s been used incorrectly for so long that many people now think it means the opposite of what it should.
Those aren’t so old days. I still write 98% of the letters my boss signs.
They end–
Sincerely,
COMPANY NAME
boss sig
John Doe
Property Manager
JD/jn
Enclosure
If I am sending a letter that he doesn’t need to approve, I sign as myself. I’ve only once in a while had to send a letter out without his signature and I will use the “per John Doe” bit.
