Editorial: Letter writing now a lost art

Greypower member Harry Anderson posts a letter.

I can't remember the last time I sent a letter or received one from someone I know.

Perhaps the latter is the result of the former in my case but I think there's probably more to it than that. The art of letter writing appears to be in its last days.

New Zealand Post last week announced it will reduce its deliveries of mail to three days a week from July.

NZ Post's mail and communications chief operating officer, Ashley Smout, said the decrease to standard mail delivery on every second day would be rolled out in urban areas from July and in smaller centres over the next two years.

About 300 jobs would be lost on July 1 when the change begins, and 100 more were expected to go as the delivery change is rolled out across the rest of the country.

The world, it seems, has moved on to more immediate, less personal forms of communication. We are now bombarded with emails, text messages, tweets and Facebook posts on a daily basis.

Usually, these come in the form of short snippets of information aimed at giving you an update on what is going on in your friends' lives. A highlights reel, if you will.

Rarely, though, is anything personal divulged. Life's challenges, its ups and downs, might be announced and commented on briefly via a few words of support in a Facebook post but rarely are they discussed in any depth.

Life's calamities remain private, so that even as we live in a world where instant communication is at our fingertips, many find themselves alone.

Perhaps long-term Tauranga letter writer Mary Brooks - when discussing the changing forms of communication - put it best: "I got a letter last Christmas from a friend who said "Next year, I'm not sending cards. I'm emailing 'Happy Christmas'," and I thought that is such a shame," she said.

"At birthdays and Christmas time one should send cards. I don't wish that by email - it's rude."