With the increasing popularity of email, instant messaging, tweets, and other short bursts of communication, the act of letter writing has started to become a lost art. There are times, however, when a person needs to know how to write a love letter in order to express a much deeper emotion. Writing a love letter, especially in this day and age, often involves using an intimate and heightened writing style closer to poetry than prose. The sender should want to write a love letter which leaves a lasting impression on the recipient, or inspires the recipient to return the sentiments.

Somewhere in the past decade, technology has advanced far past the love letters we relished exchanging at 16. Last year The Telegraph polled 2,558 people, two-thirds of whom had never sent a love letter. However, the same majority had texted “I love you” or a variation of the phrase.  This may signify a decline in romance if the group hadn’t indicated that they would still prefer to receive a handwritten letter rather than a text. 70% of women polled said they would like a letter, while 53% of men agreed.

So if we all apparently still love the hand written love letters, why did we stop sending these letters then ? Well that might be a decent discussion over a few beers between some traditionalists and some geeks. Would be an interesting conversation though. Point is, Valentine’s Day changes with the times, and even now you’re probably already screwing it up with technology by texting and tweeting. In fact Gizmodo has put together a list of excellent technology that you can use to break up with someone, this is in fact the lamest use of technology ever.

A quality love letter doesn’t necessarily need to read as a flowery or romantic correspondence to be effective, however. As long as the writer expresses his or her most honest emotions in a way the recipient should instinctively recognize and appreciate, he or she has written the perfect love letter. This valentine’s Day hope we have not been the technologically excited and have actually hand written that romantic letter.