The elegy of the handwritten letter

By Editor | October 18, 2024 |

Sean of the South

Don’t shoot the messenger. But in America, one third of children have never handwritten a letter.

And it’s not just kids. Nearly 40 percent of adult Americans haven’t written a letter in the last five years, while 43 percent of Millenials have never sent one in their lifetime. Whereas recent studies show that Generation Z can’t read cursive and has no idea what the heck Grandma’s letters say.

The New York Times says that “The age of proper correspondence writing has ended…”

“Letter writing is an endangered art,” The Atlantic said.

“The death knell of written correspondence has been sounding for years,” said the Chicago Tribune.

This is not new information, of course, unless you’ve been living underneath a slab of granite. Letters have been replaced by emails and texts.

But texts and emails are not letters. An email has no charm. A text message does not not feel private. You cannot smell the paper. You cannot feel the weight of stationary in your hands. An email is temporary. An email will only last as long as your device is charged.

Fact: Around 92 percent of working Americans feel anxiety when they see an unread email in their inbox.

But a letter. A letter is real. A letter exists in physical space. A letter will not disappear unless you burn it.

There are letters that still exist from 500 BC. Letters from early Romans. Letters from kings and queens. Letters from soldiers in the American Revolution.

A letter is artwork. It is culture. It is language. A letter represents years of handwriting practice in Mrs. Burns penmanship class, as she peered over her cat eye glasses at you, barbarically swatting a ruler in her open palm.

A letter is a moment of time. It is rewrites, spelling corrections, merciless editing, and the act of keeping one’s lines straight.

You can tack a letter to your refrigerator. You can place a letter into a shoebox and have it for years to come.

Letters are personal. You can hear a letter’s personal voice as you read. You see ink on a personal page, intended for your personal eyes. The letter’s postage stamp has been licked with someone’s personal sputum.

So how did we get here?

Every single minute, 208,000 pictures are posted to Facebook and 65,000 images are posted on Instagram. TikTok sees an influx of 34 million uploaded videos each day.

Each day in the world, 18.7 billion texts are sent. The average American will send 40 to 90 texts per day. Most Americans will receive one to two text messages every minute. I have received eight texts since I sat down to write this.

But I bring all this up because although letter writing is not efficient; although it is time consuming; although I can think of more important things I ought to be doing, I still remember the impact handwritten letters have had on my life.

The letter my mother sent me when she was out of town in Saint Louis. The love letter my wife sent when we first started dating. The letter my father sent only days before he died. I still have them all. I still read them. I still love them.

Which is why I still write letters. And I hope I always will.