So do agents.......

Colossus said:

Hang out in an agent "speak-easy" and agree upon protocol?

I'm mostly joking, but I noticed that most form rejection letters seem to have one of three formats.

It's either a "I have no time due to my client list" (which I totally understand).

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Translation: I am not interested in this MS.

Or... "I appreciate you thinking of me and my opinion is by no means the end, another person may feel differently" (which is very polite)

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Translation: I am not interested in this MS.

Or... "This just isn't the kind of story we represent" (which bugs me the most, as I have found this to be untrue on occasion).

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Translation: I am not interested in this MS.

Anyway, seems that they are almost identical and I could copy/paste at least a dozen of each type that would echo one another. Kind of an amusing note.

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The reason they all look identical is because a form rejection letter is designed to do one thing: reject you without making you want to wait outside the agent's office with a length of piping.

Whatever it says, however it is phrased, unless there is something SPECIFICALLY referring to your MS - for instance, "I found Kenneth to be a delightfully amusing character" - it is a form rejection and the only thing it means is : No.
You will likely get the same thing whether you sent a Scifi to Woman's Fiction agent, whether you can't tell the difference between "their" "there" and "they're", whether you hand wrote it in green crayon, or whether it just wasn't what they were looking for.

Do not read things into form rejections. Down that way lies madness. Madness I tell you!

"form rejections".

not all that different from "you do not meet our qualifications", "we do not have any job openings which are a match with your unique qualifications", and any other similar generic form rejections in business.

I bet you at one time agents did hang out to put together those form rejections. I've seen different ones, but a rejection is a rejection no matter what form it is in. Personalized ones are the best, but they still mean no.

I knew someone whose job it was to craft form rejections at her work place. While they don't all get together and 'chat' about it, people who craft rejection letters know how to say 'no' politely. There is a set on conventions they follow, but what they're saying is 'NO'.