Handwritten Correspondence.

Are you still writing by hand ?

First off, I am guilty of having neglected the art of Penmanship. You know, writing anything by hand and by yourself. There is no excuse for it, as I was still taught to write letters and cards by hand.

Of course, there are various types of handwriting styles :

1. Cursive
2. Calligraphy
3. Plain - jane...nothing fancy
4. Hard to decipher...just ask any pharmacist !

Looking through Amazon for gift ideas, I discovered this interesting and ' historical ' section... Entertainment Collectibles. Here is an item from the ' Correspondence ' section : Thomas Jefferson Handwritten Signed Letter There I noticed an amazing fact. Letters written by hand
( obviously signed by the writer ) are selling at enormous prices. Some of the documents on sale, are important contracts and / or of historical interest, but most of them just let you get an insight into how the ordinary part of a life was conducted by extraordinary ( famous ) people.

Are these handwritten letters ( Martha Washington writes to her niece about her impending marriage to Tobias Lear. ) and cards as valuable as they are, as they are handwritten, or would they be just as valuable if they were typed ? In this new-age of ours, everything is electronic. Emails abound and are easy to write. No tippex or whiteout is needed. Yes, do you remember how annoying it was, when you made a big spelling mistake in a letter, and had to write it again ? The good old days...

Last but not least, is that little matter of writing a letter, without abbreviating words or phrases. In the good old days it was called " longhand ". That should be re-introduced as a school subject. Most of the modern " Text / Message " creators, only use various letters and numbers followed by a fullstop, to write a message. If you are not initiated into this language, and I am not, it gets very confusing to configure the simple endings of most missives...LoL...? Does this denote :

1. Lots of Love
or
2. Lots of Laughter
or
3. Possibly a third meaning I don't know about ?

Wouldn't it be funny ( or ingenious ) if they brought out Smart Phones, that only let you text using proper words and sentence structures. Smart Phones, that make a loud beep, if you misspell ? Have you ever tried to write your text messages using proper English words without acronyms or abbreviations ? Why don't you try it for today...

Biggi