From: katespade.com
Subject Line: we're helping you say "thank you"
Date: Thursday, June 8, 2006

From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Are Your Friends on the List to Get Our Catalog? Are You?
Date: Friday, June 9, 2006

From: UrbanOutfitters.com
Subject Line: So awesome, you bought them all. (We made more!)
Date: Friday, July 7, 2006

My penmanship has degenerated into an illegible scrawl; my atrophied muscles cramp over a single "thank you" note. Notes, postcards and post-its: as snail mail goes the way of the dinosaur, handwriting has been showing up all over the web. Here, Kate Spade, Free People and Urban Outfitters use handwriting to convey the sense that we're part of an intimate person-to-person dialogue: accepting Mr. Oliver Oh-So-Right's marriage proposal on monogrammed stationery; participating in what appears to be a coke-snorting boho correspondence; receiving cavalier notes "heart, us". I feel more authentic already.