The slipperiness of letter writing

[sawyl]

In this morning's Point of View on R4 Lisa Jardine contrasted the instant art of email with the more considered practice of letter writing, citing Virginia Woolf's correspondence with Ben Nicholson as evidence. But what struck me that letters allow more time for consideration than email, although they almost certainly do. Rather, I was taken with the slippery and imperfect nature of the epistolary conversation: if even an acknowledged master of language like Woolf can fail to get her point across, can dash off an offensive missive that causes (possibly) unintended upset to the recipient, well, what hope is there for the rest of us?