A business letter worth admiring

There are a few things in this letter I would correct: deeply-valued shouldn't have a hyphen; the men's names should have probably appeared in the same order throughout; and the family may be close, but there does need to be a space in "TheOrton." All in all, though, I thought the letter was wonderful. The message was warm and sincere, despite the sentimental content, and the picture of the company that emerged was solid.

I was especially happy to see that

• the right case (objective) was used in "No matter whom you're shopping for this holiday season";
• parallelism was preserved in "you'll find truly unusual gifts that evoke happy days, promote warm feelings, and bring a beaming smile to the face";
• a hyphen was used in the adjectival compound "a family-owned business";
• no comma separated adjectives in "special young person";
• no comma appeared before the restrictive clause "when young ones raced downstairs"; and
  
• that was used to denote the restrictive in "a family and a tradition that have endured."

The diction of the letter is also deserving of mention, I think: cherished; authentic; precepts of ardent, honest customer service; gratitude for…kindness, privileges, and opportunities. And note that three sentences toward the end begin with we:

• We will celebrate being part of a family and a tradition that have endured through hard work, frugality, imagination, and ingenuity. [The last four nouns are nothing special by themselves, but together they are fresh and strong.]
• We will celebrate the vast and growing audience of customers who today are part of that tradition, expanding it through their own deeply-valued stories and memories.
• We are delighted to welcome you to this tradition and to our family.
  

When the reader finally gets to "Enjoy!" the exclamation point does seem fitting.

Another "that" question

This question represents the opposite of the "that that" topic. I am wondering about the disappearance of "that" in certain clauses.

For example:
He said I had to meet him later

As opposed to

He said that I had to meet him later.

(Better examples abound, but I think [that] you get the idea)

I was always under the impression [that] the second example was correct, or at least, more formal. My Latin professor always obliged us to use that in our translations, even though colloquial usage said otherwise.

Is this variability a question of style--standard versus formal--or is the second typology obsolete?

...that that...

Whenever I do a grammar check in word processing programs, I am told that sentences containing two thats in a row are incorrect. For instance, "I thought that that was a grammatically correct sentence." It is wrong to use "that that" or is the computer wrong? Is this considered to be a missing antecedent?

That vs which, and numbers!

When do you use 'that' and when do you use 'which'?

When do you spell out numbers? I was reading one of my science textbooks, and they're not very consistent. "Sixty-one of the 64 codons code for the twenty common amino acids."


Lily posted a comment to my previous question:

What about words such as "unfortunately," "absolutely," "surprisingly," etc...? Is it all right to use an adverb at the beginning of the sentence as long as there is a verb it may be modifying later on in the sentence? Do adverbs have to be next to what it modifies?
Unfortunately, he gambled all his money away.
(Correct? to gamble unfortunately?)
Unfortunately, he did not win any money. (Incorrect? Nothing to modify?)