I caní¢â‚¬â„¢t think of the last time that I wrote a letter. I mean properly put pen to paper, sealed and addressed an envelope, put on a stamp and posted a letter. Communication has understandably moved away from the painstakingly slow and sometimes unreliable postal service, but lately it seems like writing itself is going the way of the letter.

While email usurped the letter, initially the general framework of letter-writing remained in place. Emails í¢â‚¬“ at least the ones I used to write and receive í¢â‚¬“ tended to read like a letter with differences only in the delivery method and font. The length, sentence structure and grammar became more relaxed, but it still remained fairly standard. Punctuation, full sentences and even full words still graced the page.

But now, not only has the letter disappeared almost entirely, but even emails have become a rarity. Like my mailbox, my inbox now remains empty. MSN, iChat, Myspace and Facebook are quickly replacing the email and completely eliminating any form of sentence structure, grammar, proper spelling and even in some cases words. When I open my MSN in the morning, I am greeted by messages, smiley faces, emoticons and even alerts that I have new messages on Myspace and Facebook. Somehow, it seems, formulating full sentences has become too laborious.

MSN, in its own way, does provide a level of convenience that email does not. Obviously, the communication is instant, and when chatting to someone overseas it is less involved and less expensive than making a phone call.

While I can understand the appeal of instant messaging, I do not understand how email has suddenly been replaced by myspace and facebook. Not only are they essentially a means to the very same end, but you are (or can be) alerted through your email that you have a facebook/myspace message. If I have to open my email and then go to facebook/myspace, I am actually adding another step. It just doesní¢â‚¬â„¢t make sense. Assuming, I have turned the alert off, I am still not entirely sure what the appeal of facebook/myspace is over email. Wall posts are less personal, shorter and typically lack any structure whatsoever. As someone who grew up in a generation of letter and email writing, the short forms, lack of punctuation and new methods of communication have taken some getting used to. But strangely I find myself getting used to it, and now my worry is that I might be losing the ability to write coherently. The scarier thing for me is that if I í¢â‚¬“ who grew up in a world that scoffed at sentence fragments í¢â‚¬“ am concerned about my own writing abilities, I shudder to think what is happening to those growing up today, inundated by text messages, Facebook wall postings, and two word emails. Will they ever actually be able to write?

Illustration by Ryan James Terry