What makes a good card message? We analysed 1129.
We read every example message in Mojo Greet's writing guides — 1129 of them, across 23 occasions — and counted what they actually do. The short version: a good card message is brief, it's about the person, and it gets to the point. Here's the data.
1. Good messages are short
The average message runs just 16.7 words — and the most common length is well under twenty. Long, effusive paragraphs are the exception, not the rule.
Aim for two or three short lines. If you've written a paragraph, you've probably written past the good bit — cut back to the one true thing you wanted to say. We took this finding apart in its own study: how long should a card message be?
2. They talk to the person, not about them
82% of messages use “you” or “your” and address the recipient directly. The card looks them in the eye rather than describing them from a distance.
Write to them, not about them. “You make every room easier” lands harder than “She makes every room easier.” Second person is the single most consistent trait in the whole corpus.
3. How the best messages open
Strong messages don't bury the lede. The most common openings are a direct wish or a thank-you — then they get specific. These are the most frequent first two words across the corpus.
Open with the wish (“Happy birthday…”, “Here's to…”, “Wishing you…”) or the thanks, then immediately name one specific, true thing about them. The opener earns attention; the detail earns the keepsake.
4. Warmth, in numbers
The feeling is rarely stated outright — it's implied through specifics. Only 25% use the word “love” and 13% say “thank” or “grateful”, while 27% reach for an em-dash to land a final, quieter beat.
You don't have to say “I love you” to write a loving card. Name what they do, what they mean, what you'll remember — the warmth comes through the detail, not the declaration.
Methodology
We analysed 1129hand-written example messages from Mojo Greet's greeting-card writing guides, spanning 23 occasions and 132 relationship types (mum, partner, best friend, colleague, and more). Every figure on this page is computed directly from that corpus when the page is built, so the numbers can never drift from the source text.
Word counts exclude punctuation; “opening words” are the first one or two words of each message, lower-cased. The full text of the corpus is published, openly, at llms-full.txt. You're welcome to cite this study — please link back to this page.
Put the findings to work.
Our free tools are built on exactly these principles — short, specific, and about the person.