When sending out holiday cards, do you handwrite the "to" address or do you use print labels from your list?

I hand write the address on the envelope and my name on the card. I sent out 60 cards this year.

I don’t send a lot of cards, but I always write the address by hand, unless I created the card myself. If I created the card on my computer, then I do the envelope on my computer too, but not a label, it’s printed directly on the envelope in the same font as the card. These cards are very personalized, even though they are made on my computer, so it’s quite obvious I spent some time on them.

I wouldn’t use labels.

Hand write is the only way to go.

I write it all out by hand. Sometimes I use labels for the return address, though.

I hand write all my cards and addy’s as I feel it is much more personable.

I don’t send cards.

When my carpal tunnel syndrome got so bad that I couldn’t write for more than a few minutes at a time, and very badly, I printed out labels. Sure, it was less personal, but better than nothing.

Since my very successful surgery, I hand-write them once again. But fewer than I used to. I’m sorry to see that the sending of cards is quickly going the way of newspapers and land lines. A greeting that someone else actually wrote and signed, and that travels from their hand to mine, has so much more inherent feeling than something sent as electronic bits over the wires.

Printed labels. My all-time, favorite clients include 3 of the postal unions, which had some of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with. Printed addresses, complete with 9-digit zip codes, make life easier for postal workers. I gladly comply.

Handwritten. It’s a lot more personal, so it’s an automatic preference for me, whether or not I’m sending or receiving. I still get sad that people don’t really write letters anymore. In certain ways, I’m much more of an old soul.

Since the mid-1990’s my most personal correspondence to my favorite people has been carefully handwritten, from the address on the envelope to the signature inside. When I take my time, I have a very good longhand. And personal correspondence, unlike shooting off an email or a tweet, is all about taking one’s time—time to think about the other person, time to write and write well. I might even go out of my way to use really good paper.

I began to do this when it became apparent to me that handwritten correspondence, especially that which is written in longhand, was at risk of becoming a dying art. I’ll even throw a sketch in the margin, like a small sailboat on a hard tack against the wind, or a dog or a cat sitting and reading the text—or maybe a little flowery trompe-l’œil with Ferdinand the Bull chewing the scenery. A sunset or sunrise instead of a letterhead is always nice. I’ve drawn my own stamps next to the real stamps on the outside of the envelope. Or something apropos to the letter, like Pooh’s advice to Christopher Robin that he is smarter than he thinks, or Gandhi’s description of happiness, or Karen Blixen’s thoughts on how salt water, in all it’s forms, is the cure for all of man’s ill’s.

On the outside, I like to draw something like a line of primates walking across the front of the envelope depicting the evolution of man beginning with a chimp-like creature, through Neanderthal, Cromag, then Sapiens-in-tennis-shoes and ending in a barcode. (It comes from a political cartoon I saw in the New Yorker Magazine from the 1970’s which I’ve been re-drawing ever since with endless variations.)

I often illustrate something I’m describing in the letter, like when I recently drew a simple but efficient aboriginal earth-kiln used to bake pottery here in the islands. These drawings can be whimsical and unrelated to the subject at hand as well. Doodling used to be considered a tad weird or sloppy in adult correspondence, but in recent years I’ve found people are happy to respond in kind. It shows we’ve taken our time to answer, have even become pensive and wandered a bit, and some of it is quite revealing.

Unlike most of my correspondence, which is electronic, it interjects some personality and uniqueness to the missive. Personal correspondence is, after all, meant to be personal. So I see no reason not to make it as personal as possible.