Editing Pauline Phillips (section)

===Writing style===
Newspapers had included gossip and personal columnists for more than a century, but the two sisters added "something special", according to ''Life'', in that they were the first to publish letters and replies covering a wide range of personal problems, replying with "vaudeville punch lines" rooted in common sense.<ref name=Life/> The editor of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' described their skill as "beyond mere shrewdness—a quality very close to genuine wisdom."<ref name=Life/>

{{blockquote|With her comic and flinty yet fundamentally sympathetic voice, Mrs. Phillips helped wrestle the advice column from its weepy Victorian past into a hard-nosed 20th-century present.<ref name=NYT/>}}

Phillips stated that she did not publish the most sensitive letters that she received, but instead replied to them individually. Sometimes she would write a brief note on the letter itself, letting one of her secretaries respond fully using her advice. If a person seemed suicidal from their letter, she would call them on the phone.<ref name=chronicle/><ref name=Life/>