Today, I received this via email in a list of items predicted to soon become extinct:
9. Hand-Written Letters. In 2006, the Radicati Group estimated that, worldwide, 183 billion e-mails were sent each day. Two million each second. By November of 2007, an estimated 3.3 billion Earthlings owned cell phones, and 80% of the world's population had access to cell phone coverage. In 2004, half-a-trillion text messages were sent, and the number has no doubt increased exponentially since then. So where amongst this gorge of gabble is there room for the elegant, polite hand-written letter?
As a writer, this saddens me, even as I guiltily tuck away my oft-buzzing cell phone. . . and that doesn't even begin to address the emails and MySpace/Facebook messages I receive. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not about to give those glorious modern conveniences, either. But like a lot of writers I know, I also have a long-time love of beautiful pens, inks in beautiful colors, and special papers that allow pen and hand to glide across it like glass. Writing letters was once an excuse for possessing such luxuries of the handwritten word. Will it be long before these things fall by the wayside as well? Should I be glomming on to all the Waterman pens and Clairefontaine stationary I can find?
I've heard rumors that even cursive writing is to fall by the wayside. Quelle horreur! How many of us {especially young girls} worked to develop a style of script that was uniquely our own, oh-so-long-ago?
What about you? Do you still write letters? To anyone? Ever? Do you, too, mourn the loss of these things, or am I alone in my quirks?
As for me, journaling by hand will still require the special papers, pens, and ink. Thank goodness. If not for that, I promise you I would have had the most beautiful grocery lists in Indiana. :-)
Love to all on a very blustery Midwestern spring {Yes!} day,
Mad {madly!}
