'Hors d'oeuvre' of letter writing lives on in e-mail

Within a Dec. 3, 1809 missive written by an elder statesman to his grandson, the following intimation appears: "Letter writing is an hors d'oeuvre. It is no part of the regular routine of the day." The statesman was former President Thomas Jefferson, who apparently felt obliged to share this observation with his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. If Jefferson were alive nearly two centuries later, would his remark still be valid? The answer is yes and no.

With email now pervading every aspect of society, from schools to businesses to government offices, Americans send cyber-notes for business and pleasure, to share information, schedule meetings, and socialize, domestically and internationally. This modern medium bridges time and distance in a way that enables the transmission of information whenever, wherever. That email largely is free and generally accessible enables us to catalog the banal and the significant. In this sense, the sent folder of our email programs serves as a journal, capturing our thoughts before, during and after experiences.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking Survey Report from December shows that 90 percent of American Internet users (102 million) send and receive email; at least half do so daily.

The question remains: Does emailing constitute letter writing? Clearly this varies from sender to sender, and message to message. As is evidenced in M. Lincoln Schuster's 1941 compilation of the "great letters" in history, length is not necessarily the best indicator for measuring a missive's importance or substance.

Returning to the point, email is now so common that trillions of messages will be sent and received in the coming months, though accurate statistics are dogged by the sizeable portion that constitutes spam. Workers are typing so many emails during the day that some companies (e.g., Phones4U in the United Kingdom) have banned cyber-messaging during business hours to eliminate the perceived distraction. However, not all e-mailers overindulge. In fact, one little talked about benefit of email is that it forces people to translate their thoughts into sentences that form a grammatical style. Whereas the spoken word can be extemporaneous, emails, like tangible letters, can be indelible and later referenced. Some people keep dictionaries beside their computers to ensure that they not only transmit their thoughts vividly, but persuasively. In fact, sites that translate foreign words and directories of esoteric words are increasingly frequented as e-mailers constantly shape their cyber-persona by the typed word.

For some who in the ever-fast paced world would likely never sit at a desk to pen a letter, email has evolved into the letter writing of the 21st century. While on the surface Jefferson's observation appears applicable to our time, in fact email is making letter writers of us all. Michael Maltese is a faculty fellow with Wilson College. He can be reached at maltese@princeton.edu.