Today you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t have an e-mail account; in fact, every student at Horizon Honors was given a Gmail account to make it easier to communicate with teachers and students. E-mail is a great way to receive and share information and send data long distance – even across the globe – all with just the click of a button. But the traditional way of communicating long distance, with letters, makes for a much more enjoyable messaging experience.

Letters are a great way to express our thoughts, feelings, or anything about our everyday lives to family and friends. Letters are more personal and heartfelt than e-mails, because they are your own handwriting and seem to say that you care enough to take the time to sit down and write a handmade note. Receiving a birthday card, thank you note, or just a plain letter from someone can be more exciting than an e-mail or a simple text message. When you open your inbox, sometimes all you see is lots of boring emails from teachers, friends, and the occasional spam mail, but getting a letter in the mail is engaging and fun.

Letters are also much more fun to write than e-mails, too. There is so much you can do with some paper and an envelope! Lots of people like to fold things or draw funny pictures on their letters and there are endless ways to decorate an envelope. Handwriting notes also causes you to slow down and check for spelling and grammar mistakes and put some thought into your writing.

The best thing about creating a handwritten letter is wondering how the receiver will react to getting an actual letter and imagining how happy they will be when they read it.