When was the last time you actually sat down and wrote something with a pen? I think the last time I did any serious writing was for my last exam papers in college. After that it’s just been a little dabbling here and there in official forms and the occasional post it note.

There used to be a time before email when I would write almost 4 - 5 letters a week to friends I had from school, this was in 1996 when I graduated high school the internet was still in it’s infancy internationally. My first true email account was from hotmail in 1998 when I went to the U.S for studies and since then the frequency with which I wrote handwritten letters has slowly gone down and came to a full stop around 2001 - 2002 at that time if you didn’t have an email address forget about staying in touch.

I find in handwritten notes and letters there is so much charm and thought put into it more than when you type out a letter on your computer, print it, sign it and mail it or just email it forward. Because with paper you can’t afford too many mistakes infact you can’t afford any at all it just looks messy if you scratch or use white out. So the thought that comes into a sentence when writing with a pen, pencil etc… is much more profound than the thought that comes to you when you type out something on your word processor.

Now it’s true that all novelists, authors and other literary persona today use computers and word processors to make their work faster but if you compare their work to what writers were writing before printing came into existence it’s not comparable, Shakespeare is an example. All his plays were handwritten with quills dipped in ink and we are all still mesmerized by their beauty.

This is not against the writers that do use word processors today and not against their writing. It is simply a question I’m posing to myself and everybody out there, Has technology made us become more connected or dis-connected?

On the other side people will say that yes I interact with my friends everyday through IM or email, which is fine, but I just hope that there isn’t a day when we stop using the pen altogether and forget how to write. Plus when you write a letter there is a certain warmth in it, you read it over and over again from your bed to your couch, in the park maybe? The feeling of getting a hand written letter is not comparable to a printed out piece of paper.

Below is a picture of my handwriting just for me to document so I never forget how it looks. And to inspire me and others to hopefully write more, maybe to a family relative that lives far away or a friend you haven’t had contact with in ages just because they don’t have email.

Also below is a video I made if you feel like it make a video as well and put it up on a video sharing site and let us know in the comments. Forgive me as I’m camera shy.

Technorati Tags: email, letters, technology, internet, writing

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.