Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cover letter

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: Speedy keep - withdrawn by nominator. - Mike Rosoft 13:11, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cover letter

Wikipedia is not a how-to guide.Withdrawn. Captain Zyrain 19:59, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - This doesn't strike me as being a how-to guide, and the concept of a cover letter is sufficiently notable. --Bongwarrior 20:06, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Although, there are a lot of how-to elements which should probably be reworded or removed. --Bongwarrior 20:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - Clearly notable subject, not a how-to guide. The article just suffers from unencyclopedic tone, a problem easily fixed with a copy edit. It's also rather stubby and could use some more material, references, historyical context, etc. Wikidemo 20:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, but remove the prescriptive how-to elements. It's one thing to say e.g. "Richard Nelson Bolles advises you to yada yada yada", and another to say "a cover letter should ...". But we can still record what people say. The article should be expanded to "cover" the uses in freelance writing, as well as the extent to which cover letters' function is often handled by e-mail in the 21st century, with the "covered" document now an e-mail attachment. (There's gotta be sources for that.) The cover letter is historically related to the letter of introduction. --Dhartung | Talk 20:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I just did that, removed the how-to elements and tried to clean it up. And there's not much left. A valid question now, is there enough left for it to stand as an article? Sure, the subject is notable, but a cover letter is a broad concept, it's just a business letter used as an introduction to attachments. Does that deserve its own article or would it be more appropriate in a list of types of business letters, or the like? Wikidemo 11:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I find it interesting that Google Books returns more results (2022) for "cover.letter" than for "business.letter" (1389). (And on GB, twenty results is normally pretty good.) The generic business letter has all but disappeared in modern life, but the cover letter remains. --Dhartung | Talk 10:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

• Obvious keep The article doesn't read like a how-to guide as it does not tell you how to write the letter or what to put in one. Covering the parts of a cover letter also does not make this into a how-to guide. --Farix (Talk) 13:09, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per above discossion. Also, useful for students who use WP. Bearian 16:36, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.