Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Letter Writing is NOT Dead or Lost!

In working on this blog, I'm always on the lookout for stories about letter writing and "snail mail." Too frequently, the stories I come across have headlines such as "Snail Mail is Dead!" or "The Lost Art of Letter Writing."

Well, I hate to disappoint those writers of dramatic headlines, but letter writing is not dead or lost!

Of course, with all of the different forms of communication available today — phones, email, texting, video chatting, Twitter, Facebook, etc., — people are writing fewer letters. We are reminded about how few letters people send nowadays with every news story about the postal service.

But, still, there are many people worldwide who still write letters! The Letter Writers Alliance has more than 4,000 members, many of whom are signed up for the penpal service. Sendsomething.net has more than 600 people registered who just enjoy sending and receiving things in the mail. Postcrossing has almost 500,000 members worldwide who have sent/received a total of 25,149,931 postcards. According to the Postcrossing website, that's an average of 1,222 postcards an hour. Snail mail is not dead!

There are dozens of blogs and websites dedicated to letter writing and/or all of the things that go along with snail mail...stationery, pens, inks, etc. There are Facebook pages and Twitter trends and Pinterest boards all dedicated to letter writing.

If you write letters, write more and let the world know about through whatever means you have available (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc.). If you haven't started writing letters yet, get to writing! 

(Photo of all that mail courtesy of the USPS.com Newsroom)

1 comment:

Anke said...

Another site to mention would be swap-bot.com. I'm not entirely sure how many members they currently have, but there are more than 500 craft and letter writing swaps going on at any one time!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...