Write a letter
Choose the family, then the template. The workshop asks the questions, assembles the letter and lays it out for paper. Nothing you type leaves this device.
Everything happens in this page, on your device. Your answers are sent to no server, not while you are writing and not when the letter appears: there is nobody to send them to, since this site is only a set of files.
You do not have to take our word for it. Open your browser’s developer tools, go to the Network tab, fill in a template and watch: the list of requests is complete, and not one of them contains your text. The workshop keeps enough to pick up a letter you started in this browser’s local storage, on this device, and a button to erase it sits below the letter.
The workshop
Five steps, then the letter. You can go back at any point, nothing is lost.
The letter will appear here once you have been through the questions. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The method
What the workshop does, for anyone who wants to do it without it
A letter that gets an answer comes down to seven moves, and they are the same in every country. The workshop does nothing more than string them together in the right order.
01
Identify the recipient
The department that made the decision, not the organisation’s head office. A well-written letter sent to the wrong department waits to be passed on, and sometimes it never is.
02
Date the facts
Every fact with its date, in order. That is what turns a disagreement into a case, and a date can be checked where an impression can be argued with.
03
Say what you are asking for
One request per letter, worded so that it can be carried out as it stands. “Do what is necessary” cannot be carried out; “refund this amount to this account” can.
04
Set a deadline
A date, not a length of time. It has to be reasonable, and it has to be in writing: it is what lets you say, later, that the silence went on.
05
Keep the proof
A copy of the letter as it went, and proof of posting. Without them the whole thing exists in your memory and nowhere else.
That is all. The workshop asks the questions in that order, picks the paragraphs matching your answers and lays the letter out for paper: sender block, recipient block, place and date, subject line, body, sign-off, signature, enclosures. None of these conventions is a whim: they are what makes a department receiving three hundred letters a day read yours.
These moves have their pages, with what you need to know before applying them.
The workshop gives you a shape, some words and public references. It does not tell you what to do about a particular case, it does not say who is right, and it promises no outcome. Where large sums or a short appeal deadline are at stake, the opinion of a qualified professional remains irreplaceable.