“Dear reader, I hope this finds you well. It’s been so long since I last wrote.” Confused? You likely are if you were born in the digital era.
For others, this introduction will recall faded memories of thank-you notes to grandmothers, chatty missives to pen pals and melancholy dispatches from long-departed expats. Young or old, savour that stilted opening; for the death knell is being sounded — yet again — for the handwritten letter. Earlier this year campaigners in Britain warned a proposed cut to delivery days amid the dominance of social-media messaging, texting and emailed business correspondence — plus the rising cost of stamps — could signal the end of letter-writing.
Royal Mail has suggested delivering second-class mail on every other weekday, rather than the current six days a week, as it grapples with first-half losses this year of $540 million. Dinah Johnson, of the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society (HLAS), was not found well by this announcement. She told The Times of London: “Writing a letter is so much more personal than an email or WhatsApp message.
It is something that Royal Mail have never really promoted or valued.” For its part, Royal Mail insisted “letters remain important to us.” Then it shared some ugly numbers: letter volumes have plunged from a peak of 20 billion a year in 2004-2005 to seven billion in 2022- 2023, and are tipped to fall to four billion in five years.
“We have run numerous market campaigns and letter-writin.
