And in others the formality feels off and a tell-tale sign that the sender is not from here. I get a lot of mail from foreign readers. Indians and Pakistanis a

And in others the formality feels off and a tell-tale sign that the sender is not from here. I get a lot of mail from foreign readers. Indians and Pakistanis are pretty formal, and most Africans even more so. On the other hand, some people from those same countries will write stream of consciousness emails that look like a text message to their dad. The Western countries are a lot less formal, but and frequently drop the polite form which I was raised to use with all strangers.