Does anyone still write letters?

[Loki]

As I was reading Clarissa (or other epistolary novels), I sometimes found myself thinking that it would be interesting to sit at a desk, write a letter (I mean, write it by hand) and then receive (hopefully) an answer.
But I've never, never written a letter in my life, and probably never will. The only thing I've posted are postcards.

So, does anyone still write letters? Or do you just write e-mails?

[Mirabell]

I write letters all the time.

[lionel]

Postcards? OK, some people live in caves, and sometimes you have to print short messages out, literally (yawn!) cut them out and paste them onto the cards, and sometimes troglodytes need letters posted to them, but handwritten? Uh-uh. Signed? Sure, X marks the spot.

BLOG

[hdw]

I write letters all the time.

Ich auch. Loki must be very young. I was reading the other day about how modern schoolkids, not surprisingly, are unfamiliar with the art of handwriting and the conventions that govern letter-writing. Fair enough, they haven't been brought up to it. For years I hand-wrote long letters to my mother, and after she died I continued writing the same kind of letter to my sister, who is now in her 70s and doesn't have a computer or typewriter, both of which she associates with work rather than pleasure.

Incidentally, here's one for Mirabell - when I taught in a Berufsbildendeschule in Germany in 1977-79 I wrote lesson material by hand for the students, but they complained that they couldn't read my British-style handwriting. I thought it was beautiful, actually, but it wasn't in the German style. Just when I was wondering what to do about this, one evening a card popped through my letter-box. The Scheidegger firm were about to set up evening-classes in typing in a nearby village for those who wanted to learn this important life skill. So I enrolled, and learned my typing the German way, with a roomful of German teenagers and middle-aged Hausfrauen hoping to return to work. I still think of the various parts of the typewriter with the German names, and am not sure what all the English names for the component parts are.

Once I had learned to type, preparing class materials was a doddle. But being a fast ten-fingered typist is actually a disadvantage for word-processing and emailing on a computer, because I find I go too fast and often have to wait for the little coloured fan to stop spinning round and round before I can go on.

Harry

[lionel]

But being a fast ten-fingered typist is actually a disadvantage for word-processing and emailing on a computer, because I find I go too fast and often have to wait for the little coloured fan to stop spinning round and round before I can go on.

Harry

Definitely time for a new computer then.

BLOG

[Loki]

Postcards? OK, some people live in caves, and sometimes you have to print short messages out, literally (yawn!) cut them out and paste them onto the cards, and sometimes troglodytes need letters posted to them, but handwritten? Uh-uh. Signed? Sure, X marks the spot.

Could you be more clear, please?



Harry, I am indeed too young. The only letters I've ever wrote were letters for FCE and CPE, so very "artificial" and generally formal ones. (By the way, I know more of letter-writing in English than in Italian.) But it would be interesting to write real letters to real people.

And referring to what you say about modern schoolkids, it's the same thing with computers, mobile phones, ipod etc... People my age can use them better because they've grown up with this technology.

[Eric]

I like Harry's amusing tale about learning to write in a German way with housewives and teenagers.

When it comes to handwriting, I rarely use even a ballpoint nowadays, except for notes, shopping lists, and translating poetry, which I find easier longhand. And the odd postcard.

But most of my e-mails start with the date and a "Dear X" (even though the date is automatically added by the computer). I feel there is no need to get too untidy or brusque when writing an e-mail. So unless there good reasons for leaving the text of the previous e-mail you received, I tend to delete it, or leave it at the bottom of the e-mail. So not all my epistolary skills are destroyed by writing on a keyboard.

But I have found that my handwriting has deteriorated over past decades. I can remember how we were taught at junior school, but I rarely form the letters in that way any more.

[lionel]

Could you be more clear, please?

I've not been able to write with a pen for a number of years, come out in a rash when asked to do so, and I can't even read my own writing. The mere act of signing something is a terrible experience for me, and I just scrawl. No, handwriting is a thing of the distant past, and belongs to the world of dinosaurs.

BLOG

[peter_d]

For me THE big advantage of using a computer as compared to writing by hand is that it allows you to edit your own sentences all the time. I did write handwritten letters in the past (although I don't feel old with 32 years). But since everybody always told me that I had such a nice and clear handwriting I wanted to confirm that by writing wonderfully neat letters. So everytime I made one little mistake, or when I decided that I wanted to formulate a sentence differently while I was already in the middle of it, I had to start all over again.

Jeroen Brouwers, a Dutch author rather well known and appreciated in the Netherlands and Belgium, has always stated that he could clearly distinguish at what point Harry Mulisch stopped writing by hand and started to use a computer. I can imagine that it does something to your writing style. When handwriting you have to ponder over a sentence more, before you write it down. When typing you can just start and restart over and over again if you're not satisfied. However Brouwers was never clear on what the exact difference was between Mulisch before and Mulisch after the start of the computer era.

[Loki]

Thanks lionel. If I didn't go to university I wouldn't have handwrite so much (some of my fellow students take notes using a computer so I think they do not write a t all!). But during the summer I've not written anything, or almost, and now my handwriting is much worse.

But I have found that my handwriting has deteriorated over past decades. I can remember how we were taught at junior school, but I rarely form the letters in that way any more.

That's the same thing for most of the people I know. I don't know how it works in the UK but forming the letters as they tought us at school is ridiculous (and much more difficult!).


Anyway, I do write some e-mails but it's not the same thing.

[miercuri]

But during the summer I've not written anything, or almost, and now my handwriting is much worse.

Ha, I love that feeling in the first weeks of school! When the hand feels 'rusty' and the first couple of notes look all squiggly and uneven. My handwriting isn't all that pretty anyway, but in the first weeks of school, even I have trouble reading it.
I haven't written anything in Russian all summer (because I am a horrible, lazy student). I wonder how rusty my handwritten Cyrillic letters will look. I like to think my handwritten Russian is much more calligraphic than my usual Latin script.

edit: As for letters, I recall a single one I written by hand, at the end of the first grade. It was addressed to my grandparents and it was part of a school assignment. Other than that, I've sent a few more typed on the computer.

[Manuel76]

For me THE big advantage of using a computer as compared to writing by hand is that it allows you to edit your own sentences all the time

I totally agree, but think that perhaps we're getting a bit careless and too confident on the editing possibility.

And perhaps I feel something different when writing something by hand or using a computer. First of all I feel as if the words were more attached to my thinking, as if with my handwriting were a more exact continuity of my thoughts. And of course I prefer handwritten letters than emails. It's much more personal: I don't keep a diary but in case I did, I'd never imagine to do so writing in a computer.

[hdw]

I've not been able to write with a pen for a number of years, come out in a rash when asked to do so, and I can't even read my own writing. The mere act of signing something is a terrible experience for me, and I just scrawl. No, handwriting is a thing of the distant past, and belongs to the world of dinosaurs.

BLOG

The kind of writing I most hate doing is when I get a parcel by special delivery and the delivery man has one of those little hand-held computers where you have to write your signature on the screen with a special pen. So you hunch in the doorway holding this thing in one hand and trying to sign it with the other. The mess I make is nothing like my usual signature, and wouldn't stand up in a court of law.

Harry

[Loki]

The kind of writing I most hate doing is when I get a parcel by special delivery and the delivery man has one of those little hand-held computers where you have to write your signature on the screen with a special pen.

Wow, you are technological in the UK. We still sign with a pen here.

Anyway, I agree with what Manuel has said about handwriting.

[Loki]

What has been lost is the specialness of receiving a personal hand-written letter in the mail. When you exchanged thoughts that way, you had a much greater sense of intimacy with your correspondent.

That's the very thing I would appreciate most if I corresponded with somebody in this way.

[Refus de Sejour]

Yes I do; only with a few select friends. It's fun; you can doodle on the pages, play around with the envelopes. One friend sent me a sandwich once, crammed into a A5 envelope. I highly endorse such practices.

[learna]

One day there was a term calligraphy":

Пушкин. Последняя дуэль (2006)

(the first two minutes).

[hdw]

Yes I do; only with a few select friends. It's fun; you can doodle on the pages, play around with the envelopes. One friend sent me a sandwich once, crammed into a A5 envelope. I highly endorse such practices.

Yes, it's nice to get a letter with a bit of meat in it, something you can really get your teeth into.

Harry

[Refus de Sejour]

Yes, it's nice to get a letter with a bit of meat in it, something you can really get your teeth into.

Harry

Alas, she was a vegetarian

[Daniel del Real]

I always write letters but never send them.