Having been bereft of a home internet connection for the last week or so, I’ve returned to an older method of communication: the letter. Since email became ubiquitous, there has been a debate over the relative merits of the two, usually informed more by personal prejudices than by a considered reflection on what I see as complementary, not competitive, mediums.

If one can feasibly do either, then the choice of whether one writes or emails is dictated by a number of considerations that are to some extent universal, and are otherwise intensely personal. Email is quick and easy: transmission is nearly instantaneous, so it’s much better for anything needing a quick turnaround (hours, rather than days). Given the overheads of letter-writing—stamps, envelopes, going out to post it—email is cheaper in both time and money.

The appeal of a letter is more subtle. It’s less dependent on personal infrastructure—internet connections go down, people are too busy to check their email; sometimes they just forget to—but a letter can be read almost anywhere, regardless of technological factors. In fact, its inherent slowness can be advantageous: people don’t feel they need to reply immediately, and so may be more likely to do so, or at least in more depth.

Letters are also, in a sense, more real. We are physical beings, and the immateriality of online information (metaphorically, but don’t let that make you underestimate its effects) can sometimes be a barrier. Paper is very real: you can hold it in your hand, keep it in a drawer, tear it up, burn it. Paper takes effort, and making that effort sends a message over and above the actual words on the page.

Email is highly transferrable: it’s just data, to be moved around, altered, and saved or discarded at will. This is a great advantage in many circumstances, but it also means that it is incapable of the contextual depth of a letter, with all its subtleties of choice: the paper used, the envelope, the stamp, the handwriting. The ink, the pen, the little doodled illustrations, all give letters depth.

Unless you’re given to writing drafts, and then writing out a final version, letters also possess spontaneity: they are unedited, uncut, written in a flurry with bad sentence structure, metaphors that didn’t quite take off, abject apologies for the above failure, and a general roughness—rawness—that betrays a mind writing to someone, with that person or the thought they are trying to communicate absorbing them so totally that propriety is cast aside in the mad dash to catch the words before they are lost forever.

Email is too open to revision: you scan the screen, think of a better way to put something, try to be diplomatic, polish your message. But once words are on the page they are indelible: they cannot be taken back. All you can do is send it, or not.