Tuesday Tutorial- The Art of Letter Writing

I had my first penpal letter turn up in the post yesterday :)

It's a letter from  in Germany, basically just an introduction and she seems really nice.

I'm going to write back (obviously), it dawned on me though that I can't even remember the last time I wrote a proper letter to anybody.

The art of letter writing is becoming a lost art :(

Fortunately for this week's Tuesday Tutorial I've written this handy dandy guide to keeping letter writing aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive mwhahahahahaha! 

The first step is to choose your weapons, a fancy pen is optional but may help put you in a good mood, not optional however is a pen that works.

Next is paper, is this a formal letter? Use plain white. A letter to a friend? Let your artistry flow, decorate the margins with doodles and pretty things.
I've never written to Susi before so I went for a printable stationary sheet from Cannon Japan's website.

So how to start writing?
This may seem obvious to some (in fact I know a couple of people who set their emails out like this), but there are different ways to format different types of letters, as I'm writing to a pen friend a lot of the more formal elements can be removed.

So I start out with the date in the upper right of the paper.
The date should be written like this:  7th February 2012
Not like this (or any other variation: 7/2/12

Next I say hello to the person I'm writing to, I write it like this:

Dear Susi,

              Thank you for your letter.

Rather than the way I would just dive straight in with "HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!" in an email.

And then I write the rest of the letter before signing off with my signature.

The thing to remember is that an email is a disposable note in most cases, and a letter is something to keep and treasure and you should write it in a way that would make you want to keep it if you got it yourself.