The Handwritten Note - A plea to bring it back...

One strong childhood memory of mine is sitting down to write my thank you letters at birthdays, Christmas or whenever I'd received a gift.

An equally strong memory is of cursive handwriting lessons at prep school.

Both of these appear to be things that'll be lucky to register in today's children's childhood memories. 

I know, I know. I'm a bit old fashioned about some things and out of stubbornness refuse to go the 21st century route. However, writing a proper note to show appreciation, and learning to write "joined up" don't deserve to be relegated to history, only to be brought back as a fashionable thing or a reference akin to "Back in my day, children knew how to...".

The three Rs – Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic. Did someone cancel the first two and I slept through it?! I’m pretty certain they didn’t mean writing as in how to write like Hemingway. They meant learning how to write with pencil and paper. Like a human being. 

Farewell days of writing 4000 word essays (AND NOT HAVING SODDING SPELLCHECK) and long, angst-filled letters to equally angst-filled teenage friends. Every holiday, my best friend (KWS) went back to London, and right from Day One of our Separation, we'd write one another tomes...on red, green, yellow paper; and as we grew out of the primary coloured papers and into teenagers, onto reams and reams of file paper. One would write on both sides and regularly reach 15 sheets per letter.

The thank you letters were a given. What ungrateful and ill-educated snot dared not to write Dear Aunty... Or if one really did actually like them, Dearest. I used to balk at the cards and letters that started with To – or, heaven forbid, just the name. Clearly they didn’t like me. Sniff. One way to get written out of Great Aunt Edith’s will? Don’t send her a thank you letter. It’s one of the few 100% guarantees left us in this world.

Not too long ago, I had occasion to write more than the usual ten sentences of Thank you niceties. I almost died. First from seeing my handwriting dissolve into that of a drunk 90yr old and then from the aching, cramping and finally finger numbing sensations in every finger on my writing hand. My fountain pen had dried up so badly, that even running it under warm water did not fix it. Fountain pen??? I hear you scream – why yes, EVERYTHING looks better when placed on paper by a fountain pen. I was out of practice. I had almost forgotten how to write. WTF. 

Stung into a mind block by a blank sheet of writing paper? There's an abundance of stationery out there. Most cards do everything but sign your name for you. All one need do is address the recipient and sign off. Though, it’s so much nicer to add a snippet of news, to let the person know that you're writing to THEM, and that even if only for ten seconds, your relationship has come to mind. It's those small things that mean so much.

I'm a sucker for a sharp, witty and outrageously in-yer-face type of stationery. Terrapin Stationers, people. Terrapin Stationers. New York based, but humour with a distinct British acidity. For those who are more conservative than myself and/or whose parents or friends feel that cursing is unpleasant...a) they do regular stationery that is lovely and innocuous and b) we can never ever be true friends. 

When I enrolled my toddler in pre-school (equivalent of nursery in the UK), I was told I had a choice of cursive or non-cursive lessons for when Mateo got older. Er, come again? Why would we choose to have our future world leaders only be able to PRINT LIKE A CHILD?? Imagine if the Prime Minister doesn't know how to do joined up writing?? A future President of the USA can only print his letters and notes. No, thank you very much. 

I'm reaching a bit, of course I'm not harbouring fantasies of my boy leading either country. I don't think it's fantastical, however, to expect grown up, proper handwriting from an adult.

Ah, but in the days of everything being done on a keypad, what need is there for cursive handwriting?Oh shut up. Really, be quiet.

If we cease writing by hand on paper, how can we send a little bit (or a lot) of ourselves in a note? The digital equivalent is an e-card. Yawn.

One can't scribble a little sidebar nor sketch a little something in an email. An email is forever, yes - though more in a "you really put that on the web?" come-back-and-haunt-you kind of forever - not the "digging through a box of old stuff and coming across a pile of letters" sort of forever. It's just not as sentimental to scroll through an email folder and find a memory stuck in-between a dental reminder and a shipping confirmation from Amazon.

Emails, text messages and tweets are efficient, fast and get the job done. They're also about as impersonal as one can get. It takes time to pen a letter. It takes thought and it takes work.

Of course there are PLENTY of times when impersonal is exactly the tone you wish to convey - I'm talking about the occasions when it's a person you actually like, even love, on the receiving end.

"Writing is thinking on paper", said someone famous, sometime, somewhere. It makes my brain work in a totally different way when I write something down. It’s harder work, as one can’t just backspace, backspace, delete. There’s no spell check or grammar check, so one’s laziness is apparent. Actually, for some, it’s apparent despite the spell/grammar checks, but that’s for another posting.

Here’s a thought: Does the overwhelming use of technology explain, in part, the despicable spelling and grammar usage that one sees every second of every day on the internet?

Some handwriting is so beautiful, it's like art. Not calligraphy - I'm talking about everyday, pretty cursive. Some of the photos illustrate just how stunning they "used to be". Receiving a letter like that would be so wonderful, don't you agree? That was not supposed to rhyme. I don’t do twee, it was an accident. 

Let's not forget, our grandparents (and parents, hello mum) aren't all tech-savvy. Getting my mother onto a laptop so she could stay in touch with me, 5000 miles away, was pretty selfish on my part. My elderly mum enrolled herself in computer classes with teenagers so she could learn how to turn on the damned thing. I almost wept when I found out. The guilt… When one reaches 70 years of age, one should not be condemned to a classroom where putting a hand up to ask a question of a teacher 40 years your junior is required. I don’t know how many of THOSE phonecalls my siblings and I received. You know the ones. The ones where you want to curse and scream at your parent for being so unbelievably WEIRD and frustrating because they forgot how to open up an email. *deep breath* I’d get emails without spaces. “I’msorryaboutthisbutIcannotfindthedashedSPACEbutton.Icannotfinditanywhere.I’verungyourbrotherandsisterbutnobodyhasrungmebacktohelpme”. (Not that it stopped her writing an essay. I almost had a stroke reading it).

Just because millions of us on the globe are comfortable with using technology, doesn’t mean there aren’t those who are literally paralyzed by it.

Thank you to people like Terrapin Stationers et al who are carrying the torch for putting pen/pencil/crayon to paper. It makes me believe that all is not lost. Please bring back the handwritten note. If only for my mother’s sake.

Elaine