Bonnie Bing: Next time try a handwritten note instead of a text

How many times a week do you think ‘should I send a note or just text or email?’

I found myself getting lazy about thank you notes, birthdays and yes, even a note of sympathy. And I had to smile when I saw an article by Steven Petrow who is a columnist that writes about civility and manners. He wrote, “A text, an email, even a phone call may be better than nothing — but nothing counts quite like cursive.”

These days it seems everything has to be instant. I learned a long time ago it was not a good idea to fire off an email in a fit of anger. A person should take a breath, take several and write a letter that would get the point across probably much better than an auto-corrected email that may or may not make sense.

A person I know said her husband asked for a divorce by email. Wait. Now what? Yes, she told me that it read something like “I don’t want to be married anymore. I want a divorce. You should move out.”

Needless to say that went over with her like a lead chicken in a hail storm. She didn’t email him back.

Here’s another tip: if you’re angry don’t put anything on a screen or paper that you wouldn’t say to the person’s face.

When my parents passed I got so many cards it still makes me tear up to think of the kindness that was expressed. I was especially touched by the handwritten messages on the cards.

Birthdays just aren’t the same without cards. The holidays are made even better when cards arrive in the mail. No, I don’t work for Hallmark.

Truth is you don’t have to buy a greeting card. Simply take a piece of paper and write a personal note.

Some people use the excuse that they don’t have good penmanship, especially since some schools don’t teach cursive writing anymore.

I was amazed when I wrote something down for my granddaughter who was in the 6th grade at the time. She said, “Grandma, I can’t read that. I can’t read cursive.”

Of course even at that age she could text with those little thumbs a mile a minute. She explained when she had to write something “by hand” she printed.

When I was sounding off about this at lunch with friends, saying something like, “People, people. Everyone should know how to read and write cursive,” two friends agreed with me and two asked, “Why?”

I said they needed to know because they just might have to read something that was not on a screen and was written in cursive.

One friend said I felt that way because I have good penmanship. I do love writing and it was what I was best at in school. I had to make up for being so pitiful with anything having to do with numbers.

So I suggested to them and now to you: Next time you are about to send someone a thank you text, stop and think how much more it will mean if it arrives in the mail. It’s always nice to get something that isn’t a bill, junk mail or a solicitation for money.

The recipient will know that you took time to sit down, thought about what you wanted to say, wrote it out, maybe had to look up a spelling or two, found the mailing address, addressed the envelope and stamped it.

If you get a note, at some point let the sender know how much you appreciated it. And it’s all right if they printed the message instead of cursive.

They were probably really good in math.