Join the Discussion "Should I print my emails?" ab_email

Related Resources • Back Up Email Messages in Outlook Express

Sure, the paperless office is a nice idea. But there's no need to employ it in your home office, let alone for your personal emails.

No, it is more paper that you want. You want to print all your personal email messages, and here's why.

Reading (and Feeling)

The advantages of printing your messages start when you first look at them as they leave the printer in a noisy manner. The benefits reach an early climax when you take the printed matter in your hand.

Not only can you sit down in your favorite chair. Not only can you read with comfort. Not only can you enjoy, love, hate, think about what you read without the noise of a computer. You can turn pages instead of scrolling.

Now that you have got something in your hands, the presence of the other that email creates loses some of its virtuality.

It is not a handwritten letter that you are holding, and to imagine the process of its creation is depressing rather than inspiring (have you heard of inkjet-fetishism?). But still you have added physical presence to that distant email writer, and that makes you treat her or him differently, I think.

Archiving (and Remembering)

It seems that burning your emails in the shiny surface of a CD is the best way of preserving them for a long time, and this is true. That you can search such an archive is not a mistake either, especially when it comes to organized remembering.

How often do you remember in an organized way? Sometimes, maybe. But you probably never do it without a stimulant. This is what your printed mails can be: a superb stimulant for memories.

Email messages printed on paper don't require much to be read. You don't need a computer, let alone one that knows the CD's format and has a suitable drive attached to it. You don't need an email program, let alone one that knows the format of your archive.

It is also much easier to make notes on printed emails. If there is not enough room next to the message, use the B side, or attach a note. (Wouldn't it be great for email programs to offer that capability, too?)

Burning (and Feelings)

It is much easier to burn papers with emails of that persona non grata than to blaze a CD or your computer. It is also more effective (there is less collateral damage).

It is certainly more emotionally effective than deleting email messages on the computer. You feel better when you see in flames what you put on fire. You feel better when you see the ashes (and can blow them apart). Now, if they built a trash can that burns if you empty it, that would be different!

"Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshine
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine."

D.H. Lawrence
Dissolute

bye,
-einz.

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