As the author says, “Today, as publishers eschew the finished manuscript and spit out contracts based on a sketchy outline or even less, the scripting of rejection letters has become something of a lost art.”

I remember I once got a rejection from an online mag that was so cute I actually couldn’t make out what it meant, not even on the basic point of whether they were accepting or rejecting my submission. I wrote back to them something very simple: “What does this mean?” And got a response from the editor in ordinary English explaining that it was rejection.