Letter

A letter is a written message from one party to another. Letters are usually intended to be received by someone far away. Before widespread availability of typewriters and computers, letters were always written by hand. Nowadays, letters are only widely used by companies who send out letters to large numbers of people, who may not have access to the internet for e-mail. The term letter is sometimes used for e-mail messages with a formal letter-like format.

Advantages

Letters are still used, particularly by companies and advertisers. This is because of three main advantages:

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• No special device needed - almost everybody has a home, which means they are easy to reach. A letterbox is all that the intended recipient needs - not like e-mail or phone-calls where you need access to a computer and a telephone respectively.
• "Catch-all" advertising- unlike e-mails, where the recepient needs an individual e-mail address to receive messages, addresses are not chosen (per se), and so with the help of postal services, delivering an advertisement to all homes in a particular area is not hard.
• Physical record - an important advantage of letters is that important messages that need to be retained (eg receipts) can be kept.