If you read the personal letters of literary and historical figures, you’ll notice three
things:
• The leisurely tone and pace of the letters
• The length of the letters
• The large volume of correspondence sent and received
As recently as the 1950s, writing personal letters was an important communications vehicle for intelligent, educated people. Even many “average folk”, farmers, factory workers, day laborers, and homemakers — routinely wrote letters to friends and relatives.
People looked forward to letters: writing them, sending them, receiving them, and reading them. Getting letters was an unexpected, welcome event, like unwrapping packages on Christmas Day.
Today, personal letter writing is a declining art. The stories of our lives are now told in short, abrupt, unliterary, and ungrammatical e-mails instead of thoughtfully written letters penned in elegant handwriting. Yet people still write letters: brothers write sisters, college students write home to Mom and Dad, parents write loving letters to children who are spending their first summer at sleep-away camp.
Letters can still warm the heart, wash away fear and loneliness, and put a smile on Grandmother’s face. The overriding instruction for personal letters: Write from the heart in a positive, caring,
giving tone. Warm letters have always had a powerful ability to build goodwill. And in an age of computers and e-mail, the old-fashioned personal letter stands out even more.
Letters For Better Relationships
Some letters are written not merely to inform, but to strengthen the bond between you and the reader:
Letters of congratulations, thank-you letters, acknowledgments, “get well” letters, letters of condolence and sympathy, letters from the heart: All of these go beyond mere routine correspondence; if done well, they are written straight from the heart and create an emotional response (e.g., gratitude, pleasure, and warm feelings) in the reader.
In today’s mass-communicated society, the greeting card industry has moved to relieve time-pressured consumers of the responsibility of writing relationship strengthening messages by writing generic messages in preprinted greeting cards.
As appreciated as greeting cards may be — sending one is a thoughtful gesture — personalize the message by inserting your own letter into the store-bought card.
Another plus of writing letters by mail: Because most people wite e-mail messages today rather than letters, sending a personal letter makes you stand out and has greater impact than other more expedient forms of communication.
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