Paper and pen against the glowing screen

The difference is not nostalgia. It is speed, and what speed does to attention.

Typing is fast enough to keep pace with a first thought, which is why so much digital correspondence reads like a first thought. Handwriting is slower than thinking, and the gap is where the writing improves. You compose the sentence before committing it, because there is a cost to being wrong. You choose fewer words. You notice, as you form them, that a phrase is not true, and you change it before it exists.

There is also the matter of the mistake. A screen erases without trace, so the finished text pretends it was always that way. Paper keeps the crossing out. A reader can see the sentence you abandoned, or the place where your hand got faster because you were upset. That is information, and it is information no clean file will ever carry. The imperfection is not a flaw in the medium, it is most of the content.

None of which means a typed letter is worthless. A long letter typed and posted still beats a short one never sent, and legibility is a kindness. But if you have the option, write the hard ones by hand. The slowness is doing something for you that you would not have thought to do for yourself.