Pleonastic Ephemera

2.08.2004 posted by William 22:39 link

I got my first rejection today. Here is the glorious text in full: William, Thanks for your submission. We enjoyed reading it, but it's not quite what we're looking to publish right now. But thanks for keeping us in mind. Yours, Rosecrans I remembered my professor from the writing course I took last summer talking briefly about how there are different kinds of rejection letters, so I decided to see if I could find out where this one stands in the taxonomy. I googled "rejection letter hierarchy" and got a few interesting hits. The publication in this case exists only online, so I submitted via email and was rejected via email, while the pages I linked to above deal with traditional letters. I still imagine the same general principles apply. After reviewing the evidence, I think this note probably belongs a little above the form rejection letter, since my name and the name of a specific editor appear, but not much higher since there are no comments about the text. If it's not the case that they have a email template where they can just fill out [Rejecter] and [Rejectee] fields, then the positive stuff ("enjoyed reading it", "thanks for keeping us in mind") actually means something, but not that much because he didn't specifically express a desire to see me submit again. So anyway, that's my first rejection -- I'm so proud, I'm tempted to print it out.