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.

【視聽版科學小組榮譽出品】
take a look at your latest approach to formatted from the perspective of living life to the fullest brag about
節(jié)日信件列出全年事件并不能讓收信者從情感上被吸引 你現(xiàn)在或許還在寫出或是收到那些“史詩般”的節(jié)日信件，許多人也一直在給親友發(fā)這種信?！坝H愛的朋友或家人，今年真是繁忙的一年。我們丟掉了心愛的工作……但我們最終修好了馬桶?！蹦敲?，如果你在寫這種年度報告，就留意一下你最近的情況吧。據(jù)北達科他州州立大學的科學家們稱，這些全面羅列的風格或許會同其中的內(nèi)容揭示同樣多的信息。 研究人員對過去十年間的1200封節(jié)日信件進行了分析。許多人遵循著一個人的故事用一段來敘述的敘事方式寫信，另一些的敘事風格有如報刊文章。有一封信甚至從一只已故寵物的視角來描述這個家庭里的活動——從它起居、進食還有安樂窩等它休息時所在的各個角度來描寫。 百分之八十以上的信件都為這一年發(fā)生的事情提供了點句列表標記。但只有百分之五點信件提及一些重大事件——如小孩誕生、親友逝世、結(jié)婚離婚等這些大事——對寫信者個人的影響。去年在《幸福研究雜志》（荷蘭）上刊登文章的科學家們說，這些回顧是讓生活充實的關(guān)鍵。 因此，多夸夸你的孩子或抱怨一下你的拇趾囊炎腫，因為這可比寫作五要素（4W1H）更能讓一個好故事出色動人。