Victorian Letter-Writing Etiquette Rules

I find Victorian etiquette rules SO interesting and hope that you do too!

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[fenrirsrevenge]

Red ink is considered rude because years ago when they still kept ledgers they used red and black inks. Black for debit and red for credit.
To write a letter with red ink could make the reader and people around them think that the letter is from the bank and that the person was on credit.
Money was a very touchy subject back then.

[fridaythevirgowitch]

Burning a letter after it's arrived and you've read it is the historical equivalent of deleting a text after you've read it. Just my thoughts

[LadyVineXIII]

Fun fact: Never write a Koreans name in Red Ink unless they are dead. A Korean's name written in red denote that the bearer is deceased. I found this out in lighting class at college when we did colour study.

[asexualtrickster]

Writing to a gentleman in 1892: "written well with wit, to such a quality that it is worthy of being published."
Writing to a gentleman in 2020: "lol u up bae?"

[mauchkimberly]

I, with my left handed, reversed slope handwriting, am incredibly glad I was born in a different era. Very interesting topic though.

[anadandrade]

i feel so bad for people with a bad memory in the victorian era. i would never survive

[aoife]

How to sign off letter: Sincerely me

[steorbord]

victorians: never write anonymously!
also victorians: vinegar valentines amirite

[silver]

A friend has a stack of letters, that his grandparents wrote to each other while engaged. They had a long distance relationship and wrote every single day for a year. His grandmother took care of the letters after their marriage, and passed it on when she passed. Some parts were removed, showing how they did sometimes write things not fit for others eyes.
I think that is just so sweet.

[skipalidon]

It is an old tradition of our family that we preserve letters from our family for the expressed reason of maintaining our family history. We know our genealogy going back at least ten generations. It’s through these letters that we can confirm our family’s lore when found in formal documents. It’s interesting to read what they thought in their day.
Thank you for your insight to the attitudes of the 19th century. We learned something new today.

[riversun]

I adore how making sure a guest is equipped with letter writing supplies is the equivalent of letting a friend borrow a phone charger should they need it

[diehgo_sp]

I'll write a letter to my girlfriend following this rules, considering that few people here in Brazil speak English, I'm sure she won't find this video and will believe I've suddenly become a gentleman.

[frenchfriar]

My grandmother had a few old family "round robin" letters that were passed down that were passed along from one person to another (usually siblings). They put the old letter in a new envelope, and added a letter of their own, and apparently they made a specific route, and the letters would be taken out when they got back to the original writer. They are very newsy letters form family members that are very much fun to read.
They would also include cabinet photographs sometimes, which was very nice.

[livinginthenow]

Writing letters used to be an extremely important thing for family members. My grandmother, whose parents were raised during the Victorian era, was one of 13 siblings. Once they reached adulthood, they developed the habit of circulating and supplementing letters amongst them. Specifically, Sibling A would write to Sibling B telling them all that was going on in their lives. Then Sibling B would write a similar type of letter and send it to Sibling C ALONG WITH the original letter from Sibling A. And so on it would go so that all 13 siblings would get a chance to share their news with their other siblings. This system was rather genius, imo, because it meant that you only had to write a single letter 3 or 4 times a year to keep in touch with your 12 siblings, rather than 12 letters 3 or 4 times a year. All this was necessary because they were scattered geographically along settlements just north or south of the US-Canadian border from the Dakotas to Vancouver BC and rarely saw each other in person.

[torybruno]

"Breeding", in this context, was not literally "DNA", but rather a person's upbringing and education. Obviously, they considered this to be related to one's family and class, as these would be generally correlated to the manners a person would be taught. It is a subtle difference, but a difference none the less.

[davidevans]

Sealing wax will not go through modern postal machines, I was advised by my local post office to place a letter with sealing wax inside a larger regular envelope.

[robinhood]

I regards to the letter burning; I also think that these days we are more aware of the value of preserving things for posterity than the Victorians were. In the Victorian age everything new was better, they saw themselves as the pinnacle of human civilisation. These days we're always looking back to the past and romanticising it.

[oliviabrandi]

It's amazing to me how similar Victorian letter writing etiquette is to today's email writing etiquette. At least for work purposes, we have official greetings, how to style what you want to say, and pre-saved signatures in our email inboxes. But of course, those rules go right out the window when sending personal emails to family and friends. It's always so interesting to look at history and see what's changed but also what's still the same. Thank you for a fascinating video, Ruby!

[ahgrieser]

The whole burning letters thing reminded me a lot of how some people delete emails and some people (myself included) keep old emails around in case they need to be searched through in the future

[nyx]

Ruby has this knack for posting incredibly educational videos about the most random a science student, I didn't know 'letter writing etiquette' was a thing or that dashes were so significant in literature, but now I can't imagine life without it haha...
Love you, Ruby💛