Writing letters

Ah well, chacun à son goût. But I maintain there is no single right way to communicate in any situation.

DD3 has several penfriends to whom she writes by hand. Some of them do their letters on a computer and print them. Each to her own. DD doesn't mind, so long as she gets letters.

maniac, it's a bone/cartilage problem with me. My muscles are fine and get used a lot. I hope your hands are not painful.

Just re-read your post, gally. I'm very glad for you about the "incredibly moving hand-written letters" that you received after John's death which you preferred to the emails you received. Forgive me if I am wrong, but does that not imply that if, just for argument's sake, the exact same words as in one of those letters had been written in an email instead of on paper, it wouldn't have meant the same to you?

You don't have to answer of course. I am simply puzzled.

To me there seems a closer link between the sender and the receiver when the correspodence is hand written. We forgot to write in the visitors' book after a recent visit to friends. They asked if we would write something and send it to them to stick in the book. My husband said'' send an email''. I got out the pen and wrote some comments and posted it together with a letter written in an appropriate card. You can't stand an email on your mantelpiece.

How about making allowances for people who can't write, or who find writing painful, and still appreciating the thought? And there was me thinking it was the thought that counted!

I find it quite hurtful that the messages of people with hand disabilities, which may or may not be 'visible' to others, will not, apparently, be appreciated as much as others. I used to write a lot by hand. Now I find it extremely difficult and am glad of alternative methods of communication which are not painful and which can still convey the same messages in the same words that I would have used in a handwritten message.

Thanks for being so understanding, folks, and so unprejudiced!

bags It's very easy to get onto the computer and write an e-mail - I do it daily and I find it far easier to do than write a letter by hand - after all you can read through it, go back and alter things as you go along; however to sit down, write a letter on a piece of paper, stick it in an envelope and send it is, to me far more personal - that's all I am saying.

Quite apart from email, it's now so much easier and cheaper to telephone and free to Skype. Now there are ways and means of getting very cheap calls to the other side of the globe, there's no need to write the letters that I used to write to my sister. We were on the phone only this morning for half an hour.