Book explores lost art of writing letters.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

BILOXI, Miss. _ Once upon a time, in the days before 7-cents-a-minute and streaming e-mails, people kept in touch with one another by writing letters.

Let us repeat that: writing letters.

It was a quite pleasurable pursuit, actually. Because of it, legible penmanship endured, as did some small respect for the language. And as "The Handcrafted Letter" points out, letters are more than just the words they carry. Letters are personal bits of ourselves that we take the time to share with those about whom we care a great deal.

Anyone who's forgotten how to write a letter or who never learned will be inspired by this little book of rediscovery.

It offers a quickie handwriting lesson, for starters, but beyond that, it speaks the many occasions on which we might actually write a letter: to express love, to say thank you, to announce "a big deal."

There are lists of inspirations to combat writer's block and suggestions for enclosures _ an autumn leaf, a lovely bit of ribbon, a pretty picture from a magazine _ to lift your letter above the ordinary.

You will learn to stipple and rubber-stamp, to emboss and make photo "frames," to stencil and ...