Writing a personal note or letter

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Apollonius
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Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Apollonius »

I have been reading a book on the history of engraving and the etiquette of social stationary.

It harks back to a time, not so long ago, when people put a little more care into their correspondence. I know I have not always been a perfect poster, far from it. However, I'm trying to take some of this advice to heart and apply it to my forum postings:



The writing of a personal note or letter

1. Prepare a place in which to write. It is very important that this be a quiet place, one where you will temporarily be left alone, Romantics like high, vaulted ceilings; pragmatics like low-slung huts, some people require big Gothic windows filled with sunlight; others require candlelight and bed.


2. Preferably, your place should be away from electronic media: no phones, Blackberrys, radios, steros (although some quiet classical music is okay). Especially this means getting away from television, DVD players, and computers of any kind.


3. If the place is not a designated writing area and used only intermittently for this purpose, be sure to clear a space at least as wide as your arm span, clean the surface. Select a comfortable chair. Arrange your writing supplies. (The right environment will put you in the proper frame of mind. Just as a great novel or excellent play or restaurant transforms, you will immediately be able to focus on your thought.)


4. Wash your hands. Return to the writing space and sit down in the chair. Align your feet directly beneath your knees, your feet facing relatively forward. Let your hands fall naturally to your sides. Relax your head, neck, and shoulders, inhale deeply, and let gravity gently pulll your head forward. Take five to ten deliberate breaths while looking downward at nothing in particular. Clear your mind. Hum softly if you need to. Now place your hands on the work surface. If your mind has cleared and you feel calm lift your gaze and begin. (Warning: At no time is it advisable to enter into the act of a personal correspondence rashly or in an agitated state unless you are passionately in love or about to found a new nation and are very sure of this love or the victory of this new nation, otherwise I urge you to try the exercise again.)

-- Nancy Sharon Collins, The Complete Engraver: Monograms, Crests, Ciphers, Seals and the Etiquette of Social Stationary (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012)
Farcus

Needs to learn some user scripting.

Post by Farcus »

It'll be great to read the posts you compose and calligraph with a maribou quill in a special scented place while humming an air from Lakmé...and then type into a browser field. Really, it will.
noddy
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by noddy »

it would scare the hell out of my loved ones if i started doing emotionally sensitive, carefully crafted letters.

if im not operating in cryptic point based shortform at faster than the speed of thought, something is terribly wrong.
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Marcus
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Marcus »

Apollonius wrote:I have been reading a book on the history of engraving and the etiquette of social stationary.

It harks back to a time, not so long ago, when people put a little more care into their correspondence. I know I have not always been a perfect poster, far from it. However, I'm trying to take some of this advice to heart and apply it to my forum postings:
The writing of a personal note or letter

1. Prepare a place in which to write. It is very important that this be a quiet place, one where you will temporarily be left alone, Romantics like high, vaulted ceilings; pragmatics like low-slung huts, some people require big Gothic windows filled with sunlight; others require candlelight and bed.

2. Preferably, your place should be away from electronic media: no phones, Blackberrys, radios, steros (although some quiet classical music is okay). Especially this means getting away from television, DVD players, and computers of any kind.

3. If the place is not a designated writing area and used only intermittently for this purpose, be sure to clear a space at least as wide as your arm span, clean the surface. Select a comfortable chair. Arrange your writing supplies. (The right environment will put you in the proper frame of mind. Just as a great novel or excellent play or restaurant transforms, you will immediately be able to focus on your thought.)

4. Wash your hands. Return to the writing space and sit down in the chair. Align your feet directly beneath your knees, your feet facing relatively forward. Let your hands fall naturally to your sides. Relax your head, neck, and shoulders, inhale deeply, and let gravity gently pulll your head forward. Take five to ten deliberate breaths while looking downward at nothing in particular. Clear your mind. Hum softly if you need to. Now place your hands on the work surface. If your mind has cleared and you feel calm lift your gaze and begin. (Warning: At no time is it advisable to enter into the act of a personal correspondence rashly or in an agitated state unless you are passionately in love or about to found a new nation and are very sure of this love or the victory of this new nation, otherwise I urge you to try the exercise again.)


I enjoy writing letters and correspond with several folks in that medium on a regular basis . . even built myself a lap desk for the purpose and traded a fellow from the First Things forums one of my carvings for a fountain pen of bird's-eye-maple.
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Taboo
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Taboo »

Dunno, it varies a lot for me.

Just one constant: the one thing that is never more than 10 meters away from me is an old-fashioned fountain pen. Most of my research starts and progresses on paper, before it (reluctantly) moves into an electronic format. My daily planner is covered in scribbles and half-baked ideas.

At home:
My work area is quiet, with a view out onto a XVIIIth century side street just off of Nevsky Prospekt. I like to be able to look at the sky and the city.
A powerful lamp is vital for me to be able to do anything that involves writing, even when typing on a computer with a lit keyboard.
A good cup of masala tea by my side, a few minutes of playing with my girlfriend's fat and fluffy persian cat, and I'm ready to go.

At the office:
Jazz on the noise-cancelling headphones, three screens in front of me, good office chair, wireless keyboard and mouse, strong lighting, and I'm off R-ing and Latexing and Beamering away. With mandatory pauses for tea and short chats with the people and research assistants in the main office.

At cafes:
Sometimes I get cabin fever, and then I can spend up to a week or two doing all my work in noisy coffee-shops. This is more difficult in Russia because good coffee is hard to find, and even bad coffee here in Petersburg costs $7-10 for some reason. Worse, there is no non-smoking policy, and even the smoke-free areas are often choke-full of smoke. So I had to find myself a few oases of smoke-free places where I become a refugee on occasion.


PS: I have a few friends from college and work that I used to trade wax-sealed handwritten letters with. They're all girls for some reason, and one of them is a master calligrapher -- just getting a note from her is enough to make one's day - so careful and beautiful her note are. Since the Russian mail system takes about 2 months to deliver to the US, this is on temporary hold until I get back there next year...
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Apollonius
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Apollonius »

Marcus,


You've gone further with this than I have. I do have a short list of people I write real letters to, longhand with a fountain pen.


The author of the book I quoted from is a kindrid spirit, someone who is promoting the art of self-expression without the constant humming and whizzing of machines.
Farcus

Erasers are good.

Post by Farcus »

Apollonius wrote:Marcus,


You've gone further with this than I have. I do have a short list of people I write real letters to, longhand with a fountain pen.


The author of the book I quoted from is a kindrid spirit, someone who is promoting the art of self-expression without the constant humming and whizzing of machines.

A violin is a machine. So is a mitral valve. I like mechanical pencils, like the heft of a draftsman's lead holder for heavier weight lines, the surgical precision of a .03.
Tha art of writing is about creation and self-criticism. The art of decorating is about selection and other-criticism. Form should follow function.
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Marcus
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Marcus »

Apollonius wrote:. . , longhand with a fountain pen. . .

Do kids today even know how to write in longhand? We were taught to write cursive, with a steel-nibbed ink pen, before we were taught to print.

It damn' sure ain't the world in which I grew up . .
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
******************
"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
—John Calvin
Farcus

Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Farcus »

Marcus wrote:
Apollonius wrote:. . , longhand with a fountain pen. . .

Do kids today even know how to write in longhand? We were taught to write cursive, with a steel-nibbed ink pen, before we were taught to print.
Home schooling on the prairie... Faulkner, Hemmingway, London - all banged away at Underwoods.


It damn' sure ain't the world in which I grew up . .
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Torchwood
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Torchwood »

There seem to have been two golden ages of mass writing (as opposed to guys like Shakespeare, but then he was a playwright):
- around 1850-1950, when cheap reliable snail mail was the norm;
- electronic now, forget tweets and texts, in emails and other forms standards are maintained to a surprising degree. Apparently grammatical and spelling errors are an instant turn off on online dating sites.
In between was the telephone age.

The carefully crafted essay is still a moribund art, though. Multiple choice questions in schools should be abolished forthwith [/reactionary rant]
Marcus wrote:Do kids today even know how to write in longhand? We were taught to write cursive, with a steel-nibbed ink pen, before we were taught to print.

It damn' sure ain't the world in which I grew up . .
Yes, but I can remember when men thought it beneath them to learn to type.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Marcus wrote:
Apollonius wrote:. . , longhand with a fountain pen. . .

Do kids today even know how to write in longhand? We were taught to write cursive, with a steel-nibbed ink pen, before we were taught to print.

It damn' sure ain't the world in which I grew up . .
My third grade teacher spent one afternoon after recess teaching it, but told us we'd never need to know it and he was doing it to fill our school requirement. My sister (three grades below me) learned it properly and my brother (seven years younger than me) wouldn't be able to tell you what longhand means or how to write in cursive. I must have been educated at a transition period (in my neck of the woods) because some teachers would demand all essays be in cursive during middle school and high school; which was problematic when a majority of the class either didn't know it, or didn't have enough practice to use it to write essays in the allotted time. Again, talking to my brother, he never had a teacher ask him to write anything in cursive. I write everything in longhand nowadays, which is a fairly recent thing for me; though I guess my penmanship would be considered "casual cursive" by the old standards.
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YMix
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by YMix »

I was taught to write cursive in school, in first grade. Back then we used Hero fountain pens imported from China. I think pretty much everybody had one of them, plus a small kit with geometry tools, which was also made in China. Later I moved to 0.7 mechanical pencils. A couple years ago I found to my surprise that Hero fountain pens are once more available in Romania and bought myself one, which I still use. I prefer writing things longhand with a fountain pen. :)

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Enki
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Enki »

I was painstakingly taught cursive, which I was never very good at for some reason.
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Apollonius
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Re: Writing a personal note or letter

Post by Apollonius »

Torchwood wrote:Yes, but I can remember when men thought it beneath them to learn to type.



Back in high school I took a typing class. Yes. It was only girls and one or two queers.


Really happy I wasn't intimidated by attitudes because it turned out to be one of the most useful things I ever learned in school.
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