Politicians are strange creatures, says politician Omar Ahmad. And the best way to engage them on your pet issue is a monthly handwritten letter. Ahmad shows why old-fashioned correspondence is more effective than email, phone or even writing a check -- and shares the four simple steps to writing a letter that works.

Make no mistake, Internet correspondence has dimmed the art of letter writing.

The masses use social networks, instant message and e-mail more than snail mail (a term derived only after the advent e-mail). It is one of the primary reasons the U.S. Postal Service is struggling for survival; a recent study commissioned by the Postal Service predicts mail volume will fall from 177 billion pieces in 2009 to 150 billion pieces in 2020.

Expressing your gratitude to someone for his or her gifts, help, hospitality, or invitation should be personal and heartfelt.

The art of writing a beautiful letter is not unlike the art of conversation. It takes practice, elegance, humor, wit, and intimacy. The best way to begin is to study. Read some of the most well-noted love letters and letters of import or significance throughout the history of human civilization.

Humans have been communicating by hand written letters for thousands of years. It is only in the last 20 years that we have begun to communicate electronically with increasing reliance on technology to do the talking for us. As a result of text messages, emails, and social networking sites we are able to stay in touch more regularly- but, the quality of information, intimacy and depth of meaning, is completely lost.

How are memos different from email and from letters? It turns out that some situations give memos a rhetorical advantage.

I have been passionate about letters and letter writing since my grandmother got me hooked at a very early age.

I think letter writing is not only a fabulous (and inexpensive!) hobby, but is also important as a social and historical record of times gone by. Right now, today, you could be making history!

As I wait for my next class to begin, I take out a pen and paper and start writing a letter. I tell the friend I am writing to about what I am doing and whatever is on my mind. My thoughts roll out onto the paper and will end up in their mailbox in about a week's time.

Once I began university, I faced the difficult challenge of staying in touch with my high school friends, now scattered across the country.

At first I thought Facebook would be the answer. It seemed simple enough to communicate this way, but I soon found that whenever I tried to start a conversation, it quickly died out. When I asked people how they were doing, their typical response was, "good." I became frustrated.

You're not as different from Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin after all, at least when it comes to patterns of correspondence.

A new Northwestern University study of human behavior has determined that those who wrote letters using pen and paper -- long before electronic mail existed -- did so in a pattern similar to the way people use e-mail today.

The study, published Sept. 25 by the journal Science, demonstrates the similarity of these two seemingly different activities, with the underlying pattern of human activity linking letters and e-mails.

Learn the proper way to write instructions.

Want to quickly improve your happiness and satisfaction with life? Then the pen may be a mighty weapon, according to research done by Kent State University's Dr. Steven Toepfer.

With that question in mind, Toepfer enlisted students from six courses to explore the effects of writing letters of gratitude to people who had positively impacted the students' lives. Over the course of a six-week period, students wrote one letter every two weeks with the simple ground rules that it had to be positively expressive, required some insight and reflection, were nontrivial, and contained a high level of appreciation or gratitude.