A Student's Guide to Resume Writing

Chapter 3: Writing the Masterful Cover Letter

In today's world, it is not enough to write an ordinary cover letter. An ordinary cover letter crumples in the heat of the reader's gaze and is subsequently crumpled in his hand. An ordinary cover letter  diminishes both author and reader. It is a smutty, dirty, common thing. You will not write an ordinary cover letter. You are a student of the University of Better Things. You will write a MASTERFUL cover letter. A MASTERFUL cover letter
  "A masterful cover letter arcs toward its target like an arrow and pierces that target when it reaches him and stays there. The author is the bow that sends the MASTERFUL cover letter toward its target, which is the potential employer. That's what I'm saying here. You send him the cover letter, he reads it, and it stays in his mind, much as an arrow would stay in his head, although without killing him. It's a metaphor and you have to take such things with a grain of salt.
 - Dean of Better Things, Opening Speech, Cover Letter Symposium of 1946.