Today's Tip
The French write letters. Not emails dressed as letters — actual letters, on paper, in ink. The French letter has a formal structure: salutation, body, closing formula, signature. The closing formula alone has forty recognized variations, each calibrated to the relationship and context. The French treat written communication as a craft.
Try This
Write one letter this week on paper. It can be short — three paragraphs. Address it to someone you have been meaning to contact. The act of writing by hand slows the thought and changes what you say. The French letter arrives as an object, not a notification. Objects are kept. Notifications are deleted.
The French epistolary tradition produced some of the great literary texts of the 17th and 18th centuries: Madame de Sévigné's letters to her daughter are read in French schools as literature, not correspondence. The letter form taught the French to think in paragraphs, to consider the reader, and to revise. The French education system taught letter-writing as a required skill until 1995 — the year the internet arrived in French schools. The generation raised on letters writes email differently: with structure, with considered closings, with less impulsiveness. The form shapes the thought.
One French lifestyle tip, every morning at 7am. Free — always.