By now you may have written, or received, one of those epic holiday letters many people still send. “Dear Friends and Family, It’s been a busy year. We lost our beloved Spot…but we finally fixed the toilet!” Well, if you write these annual reports, ____1____. Because scientists at North Dakota State University say that the style of these missives may reveal as much as their content.
The researchers have analyzed more than 1,200 holiday letters written over the past decade. Many follow the one-person-per-paragraph ____2____ storytelling. Others are ____3____ to look like newspaper articles. One was even written ____4____ a deceased pet, reporting on the family’s activities from its resting place: sitting, stuffed, in the den.
More than 80 percent of the letters provide a bullet-point list of the year’s happenings. But only 5 percent talk about how major events—births, death, weddings, divorce—affected the writers personally. Such reflection is key to ____5____, say the scientists in a paper published last year in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
So ____6____ your kids or complain about your bunions. Because there’s more to a good story than who, what, when, where. And how.

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节日信件列出全年事件并不能让收信者从情感上被吸引 你现在或许还在写出或是收到那些“史诗般”的节日信件，许多人也一直在给亲友发这种信。“亲爱的朋友或家人，今年真是繁忙的一年。我们丢掉了心爱的工作……但我们最终修好了马桶。”那么，如果你在写这种年度报告，就留意一下你最近的情况吧。据北达科他州州立大学的科学家们称，这些全面罗列的风格或许会同其中的内容揭示同样多的信息。 研究人员对过去十年间的1200封节日信件进行了分析。许多人遵循着一个人的故事用一段来叙述的叙事方式写信，另一些的叙事风格有如报刊文章。有一封信甚至从一只已故宠物的视角来描述这个家庭里的活动——从它起居、进食还有安乐窝等它休息时所在的各个角度来描写。 百分之八十以上的信件都为这一年发生的事情提供了点句列表标记。但只有百分之五点信件提及一些重大事件——如小孩诞生、亲友逝世、结婚离婚等这些大事——对写信者个人的影响。去年在《幸福研究杂志》（荷兰）上刊登文章的科学家们说，这些回顾是让生活充实的关键。 因此，多夸夸你的孩子或抱怨一下你的拇趾囊炎肿，因为这可比写作五要素（4W1H）更能让一个好故事出色动人。