Yesterday I wrote a letter

Rocker

yes, a real letter.  On a sheet of paper using a pen.  A musician friend sent us a Christmas card that had a short note inside.  So the reply had to be hand written.  My usual is to fire up Word and type.  Using a pen is a slower process, you need to think what you are going to write before you write it.  Also there is no autocorrect or such like on a pen.  The two page letter took about ten minutes longer than it would on a computer but I felt very pleased with the result.  Bill Gates or any internet server people did not get their paws on my words, they are between my friend and myself.  And nobody else.

If you are not a regular letter writer, give it a try.  The old technology still works.

boogieman

Rocker said:

yes, a real letter.  On a sheet of paper using a pen.  A musician friend sent us a Christmas card that had a short note inside.  So the reply had to be hand written.  My usual is to fire up Word and type.  Using a pen is a slower process, you need to think what you are going to write before you write it.  Also there is no autocorrect or such like on a pen.  The two page letter took about ten minutes longer than it would on a computer but I felt very pleased with the result.  Bill Gates or any internet server people did not get their paws on my words, they are between my friend and myself.  And nobody else.

If you are not a regular letter writer, give it a try.  The old technology still works.

A letter costs money for the stamp to send it, as opposed to an email that costs nothing. It’s small wonder nobody does it any more. 

I know what you’re saying though, letter writing has become a lost art. A friend of mine does calligraphy and it’s beautiful to look at. I can’t remember the last time I wrote anything with a pen except a shopping list

ICBM

My problem is that through years of neglect, my handwriting is appalling - even discounting mistakes, I have to do things like birthday cards with exaggerated, child-like care or it just looks a total mess.

rustneversleeps

I wrote one to father Xmas,seemed to work.(sorry couldn’t resist)

Ravenous

This place being what it is, someone will appear very shortly demanding to know how expensive your pen was! (Half kidding.)

By the way I agree about ICBM's neatness thing. I don't have cause to write much apart from rough scribbles - and my once-ugly handwriting is getting even worse...

Neill

Pop songs of the future are being deprived of a key source of material with email etc.  Imagine lyrics of the past fast forwarded to the electronic age:

"I'm gonna sit right down and write myself an e mail, and make believe it came from you"

"Lonely days are gone, I'm going home, my baby just sent me a text message"

"And while I'm away, I'll post a message on Facebook every day"

"Now I'm eating my heart out, tryin' to get a signal on this bloody iphone" 

LuttiS

My writing is awful now and my hand hurts if I wrote anything more than a few sentences. It's a shame.

I was taught how to write letters back at school, is this still done these days? 

midlifecrisis

Neill said:

Pop songs of the future are being deprived of a key source of material with email etc.  Imagine lyrics of the past fast forwarded to the electronic age:

"I'm gonna sit right down and write myself an e mail, and make believe it came from you"

"Lonely days are gone, I'm going home, my baby just sent me a text message"

"And while I'm away, I'll post a message on Facebook every day"

"Now I'm eating my heart out, tryin' to get a signal on this bloody iphone" 

Ha what would happen to wait a minute Mr Postman?

Neill

midlifecrisis said:

Neill said:

Pop songs of the future are being deprived of a key source of material with email etc.  Imagine lyrics of the past fast forwarded to the electronic age:

"I'm gonna sit right down and write myself an e mail, and make believe it came from you"

"Lonely days are gone, I'm going home, my baby just sent me a text message"

"And while I'm away, I'll post a message on Facebook every day"

"Now I'm eating my heart out, tryin' to get a signal on this bloody iphone" 

Ha what would happen to wait a minute Mr Postman?

Every cloud has a silver lining - at least that bloody awful Carpenters version would never have seen the light of day.

Phil_aka_Pip

Haven't done so for yonks except to persuade a pension company to update my home address on their records. I typed the text into notepad and corrected/arranged as necessary, then wrote it out by hand. Wouldn't dream of writing by hand from scratch without editing first.

thecolourbox

Emails aren't fully free as you pay for internet and computer use etc, unless you're the kind of person who thinks nectar points are free. If a product appears to be free, you are probably the thing being sold

Heartfeltdawn

I type as much as possible because my handwriting is fucking horrible since my head injury. 

Zoolooter

Bravo! Great stuff, communication without a username or password.

axisus

I write in block capitals most of the time these days. My handwriting has poor legibility. A teacher once said that my writing looked like an epileptic spider that fell in a pot of ink then crawled across the page.

I recall that all the girls at school had writing that looked like it had been created by a machine it was so crisp and neat.

thecolourbox

I have two hand writing styles, one if only I need to read it and one if anybody wide needs to read it. They are very different - my writing for myself often looks like Arabic or Hebrew with the occasional rune symbols thrown in but is very fast, the writing I have to do for anybody wide to read it is like script with italics and swirly shit everywhere because of how I was taught at primary school. It's a lot slower

I don't use either of them to write letters though as I've nobody to write to who I don't just speak to instead

Sassafras

Rocker said:

 Bill Gates or any internet server people did not get their paws on my words, they are between my friend and myself.  And nobody else.

If you are not a regular letter writer, give it a try.  The old technology still works.

Have you never heard of a steaming kettle?

m_c

I'm often accused of having doctors handwriting.
However I can no longer put down a squiggle that can be interpreted as a defect on legal inspection documents at work now, as we've gone digital. I've now got to actually think about how to describe defects using proper terms, and type them in. :-/

57Deluxe

When I write in grown-up joined writing I now find my brain races ahead of my pen and I end up with silly mistakes... You deffo lose dexterity when not doing it intensively as we used too

keithf

I'm left handed and write with all the grace of harry the spider marching his ink soaked feet across the paper.

Tragic.