In the past week, how many texts, emails, or instant messages have you received? The majority of you would probably answer, “too many to count.” In fact, I would have the same answer as well. Now, think about how many handwritten letters have you received? And by handwritten letters, I mean a letter complete with a stamp and envelope, sent via post office. None at all? That’s not surprising, considering the great benefits of technological communication that cause people to make the switch from communicating through letter-writing. According to an annual survey conducted by the U.S. Postal Service, in 2010, a typical home received one personal letter every seven weeks. This is a drop from the results produced in 1987, when a typical home would receive one personal letter every two weeks.
If handwritten letters were compared with emails, yes, it would lose based on ease, convenience, and speed of delivery; however, it would win based on value, impact, and emotional sentiment. It is tragic to witness letter-writing, a form of art to some people, slowly dying out, losing to an alternative. The lost art of letter-writing deserves to be revived, because there are so many characteristics of handwritten letters that trump those of a typed email.
I was not really aware of the rarity of letter-writing until the time came when the only means of communicating with my brother at boot camp was through letters, and I found myself dropped in new territory. There was some research involved and a small shopping trip for supplies. Everything, the type of paper, the type of pen, the ink color, the formatting, and the content of the letter, was all planned out. Through a handwritten letter, the personality of the writer really shines through becau...
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...e teardrop stains were at all present, they wouldn’t be able to be seen on an email. All the tear stains would be on the keyboard back at the writer’s house. Overall, the physical written letter is preferable over the typed email because it has a certain effect and provides more information through small clues.
With the rise of communication through internet, many people have dropped the archaic method of communicating: letter-writing. We can’t deny that technological communication has very persuasive benefits included, but we completely forgot that communicating through handwritten letters has many other types of benefits, which are mostly over-looked. With the gradual decreasing use of letters, this method will eventually die out before we know it. This would be the perfect time to try to revive this means of communication before it is long forgotten by everyone.
Kutcher claims, “We haven’t lost romance in the digital age, but we may be neglecting it, in doing so, acquainted art forms are taking on new importance. The power of a handwritten letter is greater than ever. It’s personal and deliberate and means more than e-mail or text ever will. ’’(96)Handwriting is different and unique for each individual. You can look at the letter and judge how much effort a person put into writing it.
This Generation lives in the world of comfort, a world that always provides faster, lighter, bigger and better things to make one’s life comfortable. With the great inventions in our hands more people have started to use electronic messages actively. As the manufacture, science, and techonology developement shoot up to the sky, the United States postal Service (USPS) watched people forgetting how to write “real” letter (Doc F). While the world transform with new generation and definition of “real” USPS gling onto the history and bases.
Handwriting is a means of expressing language, just like speech. However, handwriting is not taught in school as much as in previous years. In the past, handwriting was taught as a precursor to reading and spelling. Today, students of all ages are rigorously tested on their writing skills, yet they are not allowed the time it takes to develop this skill. I remember writing in a Big Chief notebook, holding a chubby pencil, trying my best to make the curves and lines of the letters just right. When I attended elementary school, the teacher devoted at least forty-five minutes to handwriting each day. Handwriting should still be taught in school because it is an essential first step to reading and expressing one’s thoughts and feelings and because of its impact on higher education.
Technology has utterly slaughtered the love letter. Most people will not take the time to sit down and write a veritable letter, in fact most people do not even use their own words. The love letter was the only way to connect with love ones or potential lovers. When texting came along words like love would be abbreviated and mo...
For centuries, cursive handwriting has been considered an art. However, to a increasing number of young people the form is becoming extinct. The graceful letters of the cursive alphabet have been transcribed on innumerable love letters, acted as the method for articulating thoughts in journals and diaries, and have been scrawled across elementary school chalkboards for generations. Yet, cursive is gradually vanishing due to the accessibility to keyboards and smartphones. While the loss of the cursive alphabet may appear inconsequential, recent studies have revealed that in fact the gradual death of the fancier ABC’s instigates concerns for future generations.
Although, the internet is a faster alternative, it destroys the purpose; going by different servers or mediums which the letter might have passed through before getting to the recipient- it diminishes its worth. According to Goodman, “I am among those who still believe that sympathy is diluted by two-thirds when it arrives over the internet transom”.
Harris, David. “Electronic Mail Etiquette.” School of Computing. 1997. Queens University 14 July 2003 .
The art of writing letters has existed as long as human existence. People may not have always written on paper with pens to each other but maybe on stones with carvings. As long as people have lived, communication has occurred. It has evolved over the years to emails and then texting. The significance of writing a personal letter will never top sending a quick text however. Writing a letter holds more significance and personal gratitude then a text message ever will. Writing styles vary more and people can gather more of a sense what person feels when they write to another person rather than reading something in the same text on a screen. Over the years technology has become simpler and people have gotten lazier which makes it more convenient for people to send a text rather than people taking the time to sit down and write a heartfelt letter. In the book Pride and Prejudice letter writing takes place all throughout the book. The characters all show different styles and
Writing can be a very difficult process for those who do not know how to go about constructing
E-mails have to be professional. There cannot be a workplace e-mail that is typed like a shorthand text would be typed. The text and content of the e-mail need to be professional sentences that are grammatically correct with no misspellings and reads right. The e-mail should start off with a “Dear,” and then the name of the person being addressed. The ending of the e-mail should be addressed with a “Thank you,” or a “Sincerely,” followed by the name of the person sending the e-mail. Handwritten letters in today’s society tend to be not as common anymore as they once were decades ago but they still are seen as a high level of respect. Sending someone in the workplace a thank you letter for something they have done is a recommended thing to
He writes about how letter writing is the greatest and most intimate form of communication. At the end of chapter three, Henkin notes that the post office “brought together friends, family, and acquaintances who were physically separated”, but that it also ironically brought together “[strangers] into physical proximity” (90). Through this conclusion, Henkin is trying to prove that the post office brings all sorts of people together, and that the post office is universal. Comparing this with Sherry Turkle’s first statement, there are many differences with how people interacted two centuries ago compared to now. Unlike instant messaging and emailing, the old fashioned letter was used sparingly for special occasions. Henkin’s overall argument in his book is that this is what made the written letter the most effective method of communication. The people back then understood how innovative the mailing system was, and the people today take the Internet for granted. Unlike the postal network, which unified people with similar beliefs through the post office, the method of communication today divides people by isolating them from
Phyllis Theroux once described the art of writing and sending letters as, “… a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.” However handwritten letters, which have long been on the endangered species lists, can now be considered effectively extinct. The current generation has become so swept up in the influx of technology that we have all but lost the art of letter writing. It can be argued that if society does not take the steps to revive this art, it will be nullifying a very important skill that benefits present and future generations.
The innate behavior of communication is unique when referring to human beings. According to Robert M. Krauss, “A species ' survival depends critically upon its ability to communicate effectively, and the quality of its social life is determined in large measure by how and what it can communicate,” (Krauss, 2002). The variability and flexibility of language and its medium dictate how the message’s subliminal meaning and quality will be received. Language allows human communication to be transcribed onto many diverse platforms. Krauss stated, “All communication systems, regardless of how simple or complicated they may be, operate on the same principle: Signals transmit messages from a source to a destination,” (Krauss, 2002). It is society, however,
Text messages have a bit of a history before it became one of the fastest ways of communication through a written form. When a message to someone needed to be sent in the early ages, the only way that was done was through a hand written letter sent through a carrier pigeon. As generations past, these hand-written letters sealed with a stamp in an envelope were still sent but sent through the Post Office. It was not until 1969 when the first Internet was created that a quicker method to send a message was created (Bellis, “The History of Communication”). When the Internet was created, electronic mail was invented and this is when you can send letters through the Internet and would arrive to the recipient’s computer almost instantly. There was no need for paper...
Traditional letters, circulars, handouts, posters are going to shut because of the use of internet gave birth to e-mails. At n...