Liz Myers

Liz Myers writes the occasion guides on the Scribble blog. Birthdays, sympathy, get well, thank you, weddings, graduations: the cards people sit down to write and then stall halfway through the second line.

She has spent over a decade in greeting cards and stationery, first as a staff writer for a boutique card publisher and then freelance, writing sentiment for thousands of cards across every occasion from first birthdays to final goodbyes. That work is mostly a study in constraint. You have four lines, a person who already knows how you feel, and no room to hide behind a phrase like thinking of you at this difficult time.

Her guides tend to argue for the specific over the sentimental, because the cards people keep are almost never the beautifully worded ones. They are the ones that mention the dog, or the Tuesday, or the thing only the two of you found funny. She still has a shoebox of every card she has ever been sent, which is either evidence for the point or a filing problem.