On Oct. 30, Diana Lam, a deputy chancellor, wrote a pointed letter to the state commissioner criticizing his "unfair" system.

One of those angry pensioners is Masakazu Uenaka, 83, a former steel-company administrator, who wrote a pointed letter to a national newspaper.

He has sent a pointed letter to the management of Jo-Ann Stores, the fabric and crafts chain in which the fund owns a 9.1 percent stake.

They walked on the written names of the days, and the pointed letters made blood gush from the archangels' feet.

At the same time, Mr. Hyde fired off a pointed letter asking President Clinton to say flatly whether he lied under oath, tampered with witnesses or obstructed justice.

YIVO proposed the additional use of pointed letters that were not in the Yiddish (or Hebrew) fonts of the day.

But in March, Vice President Cheney received a pointed letter from Barbour wondering how Cheney intended to distinguish his administration's environmental policy from "Clinton-Gore."

Phillimore sent a pointed letter to the Board enquiring which half they wished him to paint, the starboard side or the larboard side.

Once in a while, a particularly eloquent, newsworthy or pointed letter is allotted Lincolnesque space in print, but that is the exception.

The department has been hit with a barrage of pointed letters from Capitol Hill.