This article really digs deep into the issue as well as giving Kate Spade a serious plug for her new line of paper goods. (I guess that is why it was in the "entertainment" section of the AP wire.
Letters are great... wonderful... personal. There are things I am incapable of writing in an email. I don't know why it should be that thoughts and feelings are more easily conveyed in written word if they can't be said aloud to the person, but it is certainly true for me. Maybe it is because, with really important letters, I often write the letters in my journal first or on a scratch piece of paper. I reread and make sure I am really saying what I want to say. That is not to say that I don't ever just write a letter and mail it off... but I almost always reread it before I put it in the envelope. Again, there is nothing stopping me from doing that with an email. I have been known to craft email messages over a long period of time...rereading and editing, etc.
Perhaps the difference is not in the writing but in the reading. We read email fast, we hit the reply button and answer the last question quickly. We don't always respond to the "tone" we think we hear in the email as much as we respond to the "feeling" we have when we read it. I know I have done this... and it has caused great confusion and miscommunication.
The bottom line for me is that I don't get the same quality of response from an email...either because I expected more or because I got less. When you send a letter, it really is a message in a bottle. Feeling the envelope in your hand, seeing your name written on it, it can make up for whatever the words are inside the letter. You know what it has taken to sit down and write the name and address and craft the note inside. And time is a great healer... the sense of relief for writing the letter and sending it off has set in by the time you get the reply.
And letters are prettier than computer screens, hands down.
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