When Did People Stop Writing Letters As Part Of Everyday Life?

[MichelleStClaire]

Just yeasterday, I created a Squiddo page to start posting content on and sicne the article I posted is in line with this topic, i thought I would share it here as well. http://www.squidoo.com/the-pen-and-ink-collector

 

The Lost art of Handwriting

 

After reading recent articles related to k-12 classrooms that will no longer teach penmanship, or grade students on handwriting, I felt utterly sick. It is now official: handwriting is considered a "dying art". Now educators are forced to teach the most pertinent skills at the expense of more outdated applications. Since the keyboard has replaced the pen, teachers need to focus on typing and computer skills and forego the art of handwriting. I get it..... Things change, but the benefits don't always outweigh the sacrifices. What's next, spelling? Why spend valuable classroom time teaching children to spell at all when auto-correct will do it all for them?

I'm not "anti-technology" by any means, but I have certainly noticed how the digital age has created a new breed of social idiots that started when we sat our pens down in exchange for email accounts. Now, no one can even be bothered to sign a personal holiday card when they can send a mass E-Card to everyone they know with a single click. Wedding invitations are now announced on twitter and newborn announcements have been downgraded to a Facebook status update.

It's bad enough that a growing number of people conduct their social lives from an online account, but entire love affairs take place behind the monitor as well. Nowadays, no one seems to bother going out to socialize, when they can "meet up" with all of their friends at once without the cost of gasoline. Children are the most affected victims of technology without even realizing it. Sunshine, fresh air and tree climbing are trumped by online video games. They are not playing team sports, participating in outdoor activities and are not learning the same social skills we all learned as kids. Score: Healthy living= 0, childhood diabetes = 1.

I know, it's not ALL bad. Digital communication has created a much more productive way of managing commerce, especially on a global level. Opportunities have increased across the board, people have access to any information they want or need, and amazing new products are released every day. Life is simpler in many ways, as just today I learned that my doctor now offers E-Visits for non-emergency medical care. (True story).

At the end of the day, I cannot help but be saddened by the loss of handwriting in our school. To me, handwriting is not just an exercise in manual dexterity. Handwriting is an art form, and is also symbolic for a much deeper and more personal level of communication.

 

Michelle

www.PendoraPens.com

Edited February 7, 2013 by MichelleStClaire

[Mags]

Fountain Pen Geeks has a correspondence writing challenge for February so I signed up and wrote 28 letters one for every day and reached out with some notes to family, friends and work colleagues....Writers cramp but much needed writing to send off and post.

[rwilsonedn]

Fountain Pen Geeks has a correspondence writing challenge for February so I signed up and wrote 28 letters one for every day and reached out with some notes to family, friends and work colleagues....Writers cramp but much needed writing to send off and post.

Now see, if we had more people like you here in the States, we wouldn't be closing our Post Offices on Saturdays.

ron

[KRuland]

When technology and the internet made long-distance communication faster, cheaper, and more reliable

[Blazing]

I too believe that written letters became less active after technology grew. Sending and receiving messages were easier.

[brewerjeff]

Greetings from Wisconsin

 

It has been great fun to hear from all of you, even though I don't really know anyone! This is one big group letter, isn't it? I find I read one post and think, "How true, my exact thought", thinking how I would reply. Then, "Ah, that was back in October and... yes someone else made the same comment I would have", until here we are the day before Valentine Day 2013.

 

For me writing, whether letters, or short stories, emails or poems, has always been an internal one sided conversation. A soliloquy? Each message delivery system has had its own pluses and minuses. I liked the fountain pen in the mid 1960's, but I am a chaotic thinker so and many trees were lost. Email has saved this generation. I know many who thrive on Social Media (mostly 30+ years younger than me)but for me it is too Public and my inner thoughts are more private things I share. Here I've just contradicted myself since forums (I know, "fora", second declension, but..) are social media. I could go one and on, but lucky for you I won't.

 

How time flies! I suggest we all just keep on doing what we are doing and encourage others to engage in communication in many different media.

 

Until next time I remain,

 

Sincerely Yours

 

Jeff

Edited February 13, 2013 by brewerjeff

[Interapid]

Even though the decreasing cost of long distance phone calls and the advent of email are the obvious catalysts for the end of snail mail correspondence, I'd wager that television habits and the social isolation that results is ultimately responsible for the demise of letter writing.

[Harlequin]

Even though the decreasing cost of long distance phone calls and the advent of email are the obvious catalysts for the end of snail mail correspondence, I'd wager that television habits and the social isolation that results is ultimately responsible for the demise of letter writing.

I disagree with that. If that really were the case, people being MORE socially isolated would have lead to more letters, not less. But the fact is that even if people became more socially isolated, as electronic communication (email, skype, chat, phone, etc) became much cheaper and much more prevalent, they simply haven't had to resort to letters.

Edited February 18, 2013 by Harlequin

[MYU]

Whenever I read these sorts of complaints about how new electronic media is destroying the art of communication, I am reminded of a column I read in the New York Times bemoaning this very same thing.

 

It seems that with the new technology, anyone can just whip off a message with the most banal, trivial content - nobody writes thoughtful letters anymore like Wordsworth did. The column was from 1917, the new technology being the inexpensive postage stamp, that made it far to easy to just throw a stamp on a letter and send it off. So let us not blame email for the demise of the letter - it was the postage stamp that did it nearly a century before.

Heh... I'd think the opposite where the postage stamp is concerned, that it enabled people to write more because they could put their content before the faces of very distant people. The more you write, the better your penmanship will tend to get (practice makes perfect, as they say, although writing with a ballpoint might make it worse!).

 

But there's no question that the electronic age has changed hand writing for the worse. The less you write, the more you lose your writing skill. Some people I've met have admitted to this as well, that they've noticed their own handwriting deteriorating as they seldom use it (typing on a keyboard--virtual or real--has taken over).

[Keyser]

Phones. The minute they entered households, and the need to go to a both / store was gone, the need for letters was gone with it. Letters were used to - literally (no pun intended) - to have a conversation with someone, and when you can do it in 2 seconds, there's hardly need to go the trouble of writing, mailing and waiting.

[torstar]

they waste away all their leisure time on TV and the internet

 

like i often do.

[UncleJoe420]

I did write a letter a week or so ago, to go with a lil journal I made for one of my friends, and I rather enjoyed doing it! And luckily, she could actually read what I wrote, which was pretty cool; nice to know my handwriting isn't as bad as I had previously thought! Hehe

[lowks]

I might be a hopeless romantic but then I think finding really really old hand written letters feels more valuable than finding a really really old email in your inbox.

[MaddyMarcel]

 

I use it for making important decisions! I have a dart board across the room and take my pen out of it's beautiful case and jam the cap on the back and sail it across the room into the dart board and let the number it lands on make the decision for me.

 

Actually it goes into rotation (like all of my pens) and gets used extensively for all of the different things we all use fountain pens for, just not usually for writing letters. As the point of this thread is that people don't write letters anymore, should it be suprising that many of the folks here on FPN don't hand write letters anymore!?

 

But what are they, Perry? I find that other than writing letters, I seldom use my fountain pens for anything else. "To Do" lists and diary entries are all electronic for me.

 

 

Interesting, I'm the reverse. I use my pens for to-do lists, and for drafting all kinds of writing (blog posts or papers, for example). I just started another attempt at keeping an electronic calendar, but so far I always slide back to paper. As for actual letters, I confess I rarely write them, I communicate by email or text with friends and family.

[MaddyMarcel]

Letter writing was a basic part of everyday life for most people throughout the 19th Century and well into the 20th Century. During World War II the only way for many families to keep in touch with their relatives in military service was with hand-written letters. This continued during the Korean War (1950-53) and, to a lesser extent during the Vietnam War.

 

But other than during wars, letter writing went into decline starting as early as the middle of the 20th Century. My guess is that the main reason for the decline was the growth of quality telephone service and its steadily declining cost. What do you think?

 

 

This is a very interesting question to me, as I've just started an encyclopedia-themed blog to catalog artisinal skills, products, food, etc. The idea is to preserve and promote those things that used to be common, are now rare, and are worth keeping ... and to offer advice on how to integrate them into a 21st century life. Obviously I feel writing and fountain pens are both important topics to include.

 

So I've been wondering myself, when did people stop sending letters? What were the root causes? I guessed email and electronic communications were central. I never thought of the telephone as a contributing factor!! It would be interesting to see a graph of postage stamp sales versus percentage of homes with a telephone, or something along those lines. I wonder where one might find that kind of data ...

[Kuryaka]

For anything somewhat important or nostalgic, I prefer paper. Holiday cards, birthdays, little messages here and there... And I've lived in a world where computers are pretty much part of everyday life.

 

In correspondence, not so much. A phone is much more convenient, and email lets you send text quickly. It's also relatively expensive to send letters, while an Internet connection won't cost you anything to send, assuming you have access to the Internet.

 

I'd say that people born in the last 3 years or so would really see little point in physical letters at all. Modern culture just doesn't put much importance on the appearance of words, or the nature of delayed conversation. With the advent of smartphones and the constant connection to the Internet, the details matter even less.

 

Letter writing is a different form of communication. Instead of imitating a spoken conversation, it's a stream of ideas. And so you've got more opportunities to put your thoughts down, and write more. You might ask questions, but also offer your own comments and conversations. I tend to be fairly long-winded in answering emails with people I know, and I'm guessing that my writing style would change little if I were writing on paper.

 

Then again, I'm an interesting kid. I don't think I'm that good at talking to people, but still want to communicate. And so I look for a medium that lets me arrange my thoughts before I put them down, while training myself to learn to socialize. I'm volunteering for a local hospital. Front desk. It's given me a few opportunities to adapt to unfamiliar situations and people, and it's tested my English comprehension when I try to decipher telephone messages.

[mrcharlie]

I know for sure I was still sending letters in the early 1990s. But I just used up my last 6x9 lined letter writing pad from that era in the past couple months. I'm still using up the (slightly browned around the edges) matching envelopes. I've had internet e-mail since sometime during my first or second year of college (sometime in 1984, possibly in late 1983), but the mid-1990s was when nearly everyone had email, and when I stopped writing letters.

 

A few people mentioned the price of postage; that is not the reason. In constant dollar terms, the cost of a 1 oz or less first class letter in the US is the same now as it was in 1971 ($0.08 in 1971 == $0.45 now; the rates just rose from $0.45 to $0.46). I'm betting UK postage is not out of line with the 1960s or 1970s in inflation-adjusted terms either.

 

Someone above mentioned that when phones came into homes then it killed letters. That is historically inaccurate. At least in the US in the 1960s and 1970s nearly everyone had a phone in their own home, and for quite some time (decades) prior to that. It is difficult to explain, but long distance rates for telephone usage were prohibitively expensive for a long time after household phones became common. Long distance calls were for special occasions or because immediate communication was necessary, short, and infrequent for most people when I was a child (in the 1970s). Long distance was not affordable for frequent use or long calls for most people until sometime in the 1980s, and it wasn't until approximately the turn the century or so that long distance charges became truly insignificant or not even part of the bill anymore (as cell phone plans stopped distinguishing between local and long distance minutes).

 

If you are young enough that all you can remember is people using their phones to call anyone anywhere without thinking about cost, it is probably difficult to imagine that phone usage was not always that way. There was still a place for letters long long after phones became very common in US homes and probably most of "the west"; that experience may vary significantly in other parts of the world that are more recently "developed", I'm sure.

[rwilsonedn]

+1 I think mrcharlie is right to take relative cost out of the equation, in regard to both postage costs and telephones. My memory agrees: long-distance phone calls were for emergencies and very special occasions.

That leaves other factors. One is certainly convenience. But the question of convenience in itself raises a question: do I use e-mail to communicate with my close friends and family because it is more convenient and they don't merit the extra bother? Do I use it because the immediacy makes the communication a conversation rather than a correspondence? What about the cases where sitting down at leisure, framing my thoughts, and writing them on good stationery in my own hand would be appropriate and pleasurable? Does that not happen any more? Or am I simply too busy now to allow myself that pleasure?

For me, the loss of written correspondence (and it is a loss) is about the loss of discretionary time.

ron

[Harlequin]

+1 I think mrcharlie is right to take relative cost out of the equation, in regard to both postage costs and telephones. My memory agrees: long-distance phone calls were for emergencies and very special occasions.

That leaves other factors. One is certainly convenience. But the question of convenience in itself raises a question: do I use e-mail to communicate with my close friends and family because it is more convenient and they don't merit the extra bother? Do I use it because the immediacy makes the communication a conversation rather than a correspondence? What about the cases where sitting down at leisure, framing my thoughts, and writing them on good stationery in my own hand would be appropriate and pleasurable? Does that not happen any more? Or am I simply too busy now to allow myself that pleasure?

For me, the loss of written correspondence (and it is a loss) is about the loss of discretionary time.

ron

That. The line in bold up there- that is a big part of it imo. No one wants to have a conversation a couple of pages at a time weeks or months apart. Up until the last quarter of the 20th century, they HAD to. But it simply isn't a preferable or even very good way to communicate, given any other option. An email can be written with the same care, the same time taken to "frame" your thoughts, etc. What matters most, what has ALWAYS mattered most, is what is being said, not the way it is transmitted.

[ZachWasniak]

My school is sooooooooooo concerned about constructed response, so they have us write in little paper packets. Why not have us write to other people in another state or something, then to avoid looking a fool by writing with slang, they would write properly, and hopefully get used to it. It baffles me that we don't get to do fun stuff like that..

Edited March 5, 2013 by ZachWasniak