Writing letters

Letters, not messages

A thread here looks like correspondence rather than chat. People write a few hundred words at a time, sign off, and wait. Members can set a minimum length on their own profile, so if someone only wants letters of fifty words or more, the site enforces it politely on their behalf — a two-word reply simply will not send.

The panel on the right shows what time it is where the other person is, what the weather is doing, and how far away they are. It is a small thing that changes how you write: it is easier to picture someone when you know it is already dark there.

Photos, video letters and sealed questions

Under the writing box are the things you can send besides words. Photos, which can be set to open once for ten seconds if you would rather they were not kept. Video letters, which always travel by airmail and are reviewed by a moderator. And the sealed question — both of you answer the same question, and neither answer unseals until both are written, like opening envelopes at the same moment.

Safety sits in the thread, not in a policy page

The amber note in the screenshot appears above every conversation with someone who has not yet verified themselves on video. It says what it says on purpose: never share your address, your phone number, passwords or money, and report anything that feels off. Blocking is one click, reporting is two, and a report reaches a human.

Members under eighteen and adults are kept in entirely separate communities. They do not see each other in Discover, cannot send each other a connection request, and cannot write to each other at all.

One letter a day, until they answer

Until somebody replies to you, you can send them one letter a day. It is a small rule that does a lot of work. Popular members are not buried under dozens of unanswered openers, so the letters they do receive get read properly. And it nudges everyone towards writing one considered first letter rather than five quick ones — which, as it happens, is also the letter most likely to be answered.

Once a conversation is going, the limit disappears and you write as often as the two of you like.

Minimum lengths and a live word count

If you would rather receive letters than messages, you can set a minimum length for anything sent to you — fifty, one hundred and fifty or three hundred words. Anyone writing to you sees a word count filling up as they type, so nobody is caught out, and a letter that is too short will not send until it is long enough. It is the clearest way we have found of saying "I would like you to take your time" without anybody having to say it.

Corrections for language learners

A great many members are writing in a language they are still learning. If you are one of them, you can let your pen pals correct your letters. A correction arrives as a word-by-word comparison of what you wrote and what a native speaker would have written, separate from the conversation itself, so the letter stays a letter and the lesson sits beside it. Nobody corrects you unless you have asked them to.

Faces come later

Members who would rather be chosen for their words can keep their profile photo pixelated. It sharpens gradually as letters are exchanged and only becomes clear after twenty-five of them. Photo albums work the same way: they are locked by default, a pen pal can only ask to see one after a real correspondence of twenty-five letters, and you decide album by album who gets in.

It means the first thing anyone knows about you is how you write, which is the right way round for a pen pal site.

Something to write about

Every month the whole community gets one photo prompt for the postcard board — something red on your street, the view from your window — and one world question, answered by everybody and revealed by country, never by person. Neither is compulsory. Both exist because the hardest part of a long correspondence is the fourth letter, when the introductions are done and nobody is sure what to say next, and there is nothing like finding out that dinner in your pen pal's country is three hours later than yours to get a letter started.

If you have a pen pal anywhere, on this site or not, our letter-writing guides and letter prompt generator are free to use.