A Lament On The Disappearance Of The Hand Written Letter (But It Hasn't!)

[Rancho Gordo]

I have three friends that all love letter writing and we exchange them, even though we're friends onlne and even text.
I spent this last new year's day writing about 15 letters to people I cared about and it was a great way to pass the day and I believe it will be a new tradition. I know Italians like to call everyone they know and chat. I'll do this but with notes.

[cellmatrix]

I recently wrote a friend from high school I tracked down after 50 years! We all write cards and letters, right?

 

Nice article on the NY Time lamenting its disappearance, though...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/books/art-of-writing-letters.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

Great to see your post HDoug -Ill just add that if the current slowing down of the US post office is allowed to continue unchallenged - this will hurt our letter writing in a big way

[Estycollector]

I wrote a letter to one of my grand daugthers explaining my plans to move near her. Then, today a friend said he had kept a letter I wrote a decade ago which I do not remember doing. No one keeps emails and texts that long do they?

[A Smug Dill]

Then, today a friend said he had kept a letter I wrote a decade ago which I do not remember doing. No one keeps emails and texts that long do they?

 

 

Now that so much of our communications are held virtually in perpetuity "in the cloud", and without the sort of storage space limitations people faced 15 to 20 years ago, keeping private/directed correspondence is almost the default course of action. I still have email messages dating back to 2002 in my Hotmail account (close to when I started using it. Some older web mail providers, and ISPs whose POP3 services I used, from earlier have disappeared from the face of the Internet, but I probably have Outlook PST files "archived" somewhere on a CD-ROM from before the turn of the century.

[Estycollector]

 

 

Now that so much of our communications are held virtually in perpetuity "in the cloud", and without the sort of storage space limitations people faced 15 to 20 years ago, keeping private/directed correspondence is almost the default course of action. I still have email messages dating back to 2002 in my Hotmail account (close to when I started using it. Some older web mail providers, and ISPs whose POP3 services I used, from earlier have disappeared from the face of the Internet, but I probably have Outlook PST files "archived" somewhere on a CD-ROM from before the turn of the century.

 

Yes, I was anticipating some push back. I do however think that a physical article continues to have value over electronic if for no other reason but the dependancy of WIFI.

[cellmatrix]

 

Yes, I was anticipating some push back. I do however think that a physical article continues to have value over electronic if for no other reason but the dependancy of WIFI.

I have email messages dating back to 1995. I think we all have to consider once its posted on the internet its probably going to be around forever. In contrast paper can become destroyed n a fire or flood, get lost etc. In that sense paper is far less permanent. But ( and I guess its just the boomer in me speaking), just like you having a physical paper copy of the letters and words of our friends and loved ones means so much more than an email or text.

 

Thats why as one who loves snail mail, Im peeved that people want to limit and slow down the USPS (arent you?)

[cellmatrix]

Duplicate post

[ParramattaPaul]

'... Then, today a friend said he had kept a letter I wrote a decade ago which I do not remember doing. No one keeps emails and texts that long do they?' Speaking personally, not by intent. Others? I imagine there are some people who archive their emails for any number of reasons. That said, It may be time for me to do another email purge.

 

Email purges; that is food for the reducing clutter thread.

Edited August 15, 2020 by ParramattaPaul

[ParramattaPaul]

I have email messages dating back to 1995. I think we all have to consider once its posted on the internet its probably going to be around forever. In contrast paper can become destroyed n a fire or flood, get lost etc. In that sense paper is far less permanent. But ( and I guess its just the boomer in me speaking), just like you having a physical paper copy of the letters and words of our friends and loved ones means so much more than an email or text.

 

Thats why as one who loves snail mail, Im peeved that people want to limit and slow down the USPS (arent you?)

I have to ask. How much of the USPS service is duplicated by the likes of Fed-Ex, UPS, and the like? Would reducing services to five days a week -- as we did in Australia decades ago -- really be an inconvenience?

[cellmatrix]

I have to ask. How much of the USPS service is duplicated by the likes of Fed-Ex, UPS, and the like? Would reducing services to five days a week -- as we did in Australia decades ago -- really be an inconvenience?

the us post office has been an important part of our nation since its inception with Ben Franklin as first postmaster general. Its never been diminished before in over 200 years. Not only letters we rely on it for things like mail in prescriptions for our veterans and other hospitals and mail in voting, which can be time sensitive. So no Id rather not hamstring our post office, unless there was some compelling need which there is not.

[cellmatrix]

'... Then, today a friend said he had kept a letter I wrote a decade ago which I do not remember doing. No one keeps emails and texts that long do they?' Speaking personally, not by intent. Others? I imagine there are some people who archive their emails for any number of reasons. That said, It may be time for me to do another email purge.

 

Email purges; that is food for the reducing clutter thread.

Whether you deleted them or not your prior emails can be accessed and recovered in a variety of ways for various reasons

[ParramattaPaul]

Whether you deleted them or not your prior emails can be accessed and recovered in a variety of ways for various reasons

I have no doubt about that, but at least they aren't taking up space on my hard drive.

[BaronWulfraed]

I wrote a letter to one of my grand daugthers explaining my plans to move near her. Then, today a friend said he had kept a letter I wrote a decade ago which I do not remember doing. No one keeps emails and texts that long do they?

 

E:\Comms Archive\Eudora\1997\970920>dir
 Volume in drive E is PhotoExt
 Volume Serial Number is CA0A-BC13

 Directory of E:\Comms Archive\Eudora\1997\970920

06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          .
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          ..
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          Furry.fol
09/08/1997  01:38 PM            11,421 In.mbx
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          Maillist.fol
09/08/1997  12:43 PM                 0 Newlistm.mbx
07/04/2017  09:52 AM    <DIR>          Oldmail.fol
09/08/1997  01:43 PM            24,628 Out.mbx
09/08/1997  01:48 PM            78,953 Sentmail.mbx
09/08/1997  01:43 PM                 0 Spams.mbx
09/08/1997  01:50 PM                 0 Trash.mbx
               6 File(s)        115,002 bytes
               5 Dir(s)  3,479,441,801,216 bytes free

I don't keep /everything/, but there is a fair amount of inbound mail that I have archived; and /all/ outbound ends up in "sentmail". It's time I consolidate the last decade or so.

E:\Comms Archive\Eudora>dir
 Volume in drive E is PhotoExt
 Volume Serial Number is CA0A-BC13

 Directory of E:\Comms Archive\Eudora

03/05/2018  11:27 PM    <DIR>          .
03/05/2018  11:27 PM    <DIR>          ..
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          040512
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          050330
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          060505
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          071020
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          080822
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          100224
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          111022
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          120301
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          121022
06/22/2013  11:42 AM    <DIR>          130616
12/21/2016  10:59 AM    <DIR>          161221
07/31/2017  10:57 AM    <DIR>          170731
03/05/2018  11:29 PM    <DIR>          180305
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          1997
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          1998
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          1999
06/15/2013  06:33 PM    <DIR>          2000
06/15/2013  06:34 PM    <DIR>          2001
06/15/2013  06:34 PM    <DIR>          2002-2003
03/12/2005  02:47 PM           124,235 SurveyProcessed.mbx
12/25/2007  08:16 PM            27,790 SurveyProcessed.toc
               2 File(s)        152,025 bytes
              21 Dir(s)  3,479,441,801,216 bytes free

I've also changed from using Qualcomm Eudora to Pandora http://www.drivehq.com/web/brana/pandora.htm (link included just because there are too many other entities also using "Pandora")

[BaronWulfraed]

I have to ask. How much of the USPS service is duplicated by the likes of Fed-Ex, UPS, and the like? Would reducing services to five days a week -- as we did in Australia decades ago -- really be an inconvenience?

Don't know about current laws, but at least some decades ago, UPS and FedEx were supposed to be restricted to, well, "parcels". They were not supposed to handle routine (letters) mail.

 

These days we have things like "UPS SurePost" -- in which UPS uses its fleet to move the package from state to state... And then dumps it into the USPS system for final delivery! And that has ended up having USPS make limited deliveries on Sundays even.

 

And Amazon is trying to cut out everyone with its own delivery fleet. {I truly think Amazon needs to be broken up a-la Standard Oil: Amazon Delivery Services [with a fee schedule and open to all shippers], Amazon Market Place [for the e-Bay/etsy style of stuff, where Amazon provides the market but sellers provide the content], "Original" Amazon [only stuff IT stocks, no 3rd party sellers -- and where it has to pay Amazon Delivery to carry packages, no free exchange], Amazon Web Services.... And maybe do the same with Google -- split search from Android and phone manufacture}

[Misfit]

But as per Estycollector’s post, the cloud mentioned later can hold some messages from 20 years ago, true. But it can’t find a letter written in the 1960s I found in family boxes.

 

We could argue there is more power in a letter today, because they are rarer.

[A Smug Dill]

We could argue there is more power in a letter today, because they are rarer.

 

 

The power to do what exactly, though?

 

A tersely worded email from me, as the customer, using exactly the sort of corporate-speak I know would get the attention of paper-pushers in a national supermarket chain's head office, got someone fired. (That wasn't actually my intent; I just wanted the staff member who lied to me for the benefit of his own expediency at the end of his shift to get, um, 'counselled' and be warned on record by superiors way above his immediate supervisor never to do that again.) Even if we're talking about the power to stir up emotions (including but not limited to fear and dread), I'd say corporate-speak (vocabulary and phrasing) in an email message that can be easily printed and forwarded (read: 'escalated') to the next level of corporate management to deal with is more 'powerful' than a complaint sent on paper written by hand in Diamine Oxblood ink with my most 'flexy' nib and the most calligraphic hand I could manage.

 

Equally, when my wife and I were absolutely delighted by the service we received at our wedding reception venue, I wrote an email to the liaison officer thanking her and the hotel's staff, told her to add a specified amount as a tip to the final invoice, and asked her to let us know if there's anything we could do to make known to her managers how happy we and our guests were. She replied literally two hours later that she'd already forwarded our email to the entire staff from the General Manager down to the waitstaff. If we were to write her a nice handwritten thank-you letter, I doubt she'd either scan the pages or transcribe the content to forward to colleagues high and low (hopefully to her gain), no matter how artistically rendered the words may be on paper.

 

So, I'd argue that email is more powerful in terms of precipitating 'real world' outcomes (as in not just inside someone's head and/or pertaining to one's emotional state); and almost immediate delivery of the message (e.g. Monday morning after a Saturday service event) has more impact than if it took another week for a handwritten letter to arrive by post and eventually make it physically to the recipient's desk.

[Estycollector]

Email can actually do more harm. It is somewhat a lazy way to communicate. If I have an issue with service or a product, rather than finding a corporate email, I would have a face to face with the person or an immediate supervisor. Email is a bit passive aggressive as the post above demonstrates that led to someone suffering harm by loosing a job.

 

That said, we all chose not just what medium to use to communicate, but with a full knowledge that words matter.

[TSherbs]

In the US, with the postal service under attack, snail mail may become less reliable. Oh, and I agree with Dill, mostly.

 

@Esty: And writing an important email has nothing "lazy" to it, Esty. Its modality is efficient, convenient, and recommended (published) by the recipient. The labor of creation and delivery is properly channeled into the wording of the message. Are some writers slackers? Sure, but that's character trait, not an aspect of the communication technology.

 

 

.

Edited August 18, 2020 by TSherbs

[cellmatrix]

Why snail mail? The broader question is why do we use fountain pens? Is it to share with others (letters) or for our own private pleasures (journal or private collection). I guess if only the latter then email of course has advantages. You dont have to expend any effort to develop your handwriting, you dont have to pay postage, its faster etc. Of course I write a lot of emails, many more than the letters I write. But for me, I view a hand written letter as some thing more special, and imparting more to the other person than text or email.

[Misfit]

I don’t want to argue. But Gil, when I wrote you a thank you note for the ink samples I won in your PiF, did that mean more than if I’d sent you a PM?