Speaking as one who actually writes them, I can honestly attest to the fact that the art of writing an actual letter is not dead. It may be possible that I could be one of the few people in the world who still writes them however, but the fact that I do means handwritten letters are still happening somewhere in the world so, there you go. Not dead yet.
I’m talking about real letters. The ones where you pick up a pen and manually write with it on a nice piece of nice stationery, fold the pages on completion, pop them into an envelope, put a stamp on same and leave it in the hands of the postal service to deliver it to its recipient. I still write them and I still use nice stationery and I know the recipients appreciate them because they write back and the sight of a handwritten envelope amongst all the other mail gives me a real thrill!
Certainly, I use email. I post comments on Facebook. I type up business letters etc, but I have not forgotten how to handwrite an actual letter and just to keep the tradition alive I still do it. But it could end up obsolete and that would be sad. Most older people still write letters to friends and family but what will happen when they pass on? Will their children and grandchildren remember how it’s done? Will they even keep the tradition alive? Are handwritten letters destined to become museum exhibits one day, with people chuckling over the archaic communications of a bygone era? Oh I hope not.
Anyway, having been a committed letter writer for pretty much most of my life, I was always easy to buy for. Everyone could fall back on stationery because I would inevitably fall upon it in glee. In fact, I went through heaps of the stuff because I could not bring myself to write a personal letter on anything else, which completely ruled out ruled notepads! I mean, they are so basic! No flowers or pretty colours. No nice borders or anything and the thought of writing to a friend on something so base went completely against the grain for me. I just couldn’t do it.
Then came pens with coloured inks. Oh joy and bliss, because I had already gotten over the gold and silver on dark paper phase. In case you didn’t know, I am big on coloured inks and especially like turquoise blue. It’s so my colour! In fact they are all so my colours and I have several pretty shades on hand and those that know me well have just accepted that everything they ever get from me is going to come in some colour or other. On nice paper. Anything nice coloured ink except standard dark blue or black. I mean, why use the standard if you can go with a genuinely exciting shade, huh? I tend to email in colour too, but maybe you’ve already figured that out. It’s just a quirk of mine.
Anyway, in regards to letters and things, I still think it’s a nice way to keep in touch with friends and rellies who are far away even though I could just as easily email them. I think it’s because I’d hate to see handwritten letters become obsolete. Thankfully I have correspondents who feel as I do and between the lot of us we are keeping the fine art of letter writing alive and with a little luck, so will out kids and eventual grandkids and who knows, it may come back into vogue again! It’s not impossible when you come to think of it…we just need one popular world figure (or in the absence of one of those, some celeb or other) to decide that handwriting letters is the New Big Thing and hey, everyone will be going flat out to acquire the necessary tools and handwritten letters will be cool again. It could happen…
Not anytime soon I guess, but maybe down the track…