Greeting Card Industry Reports Average Paris Birthday Card Now 847 Words
PARIS — The greeting card industry’s French division has issued a product development memo following data showing that the average Paris birthday card sent between adults now contains 847 words, an increase of 340% since 2015 and sufficient length that several recipients have reported reading the card “in two sittings.” Three recipients have mentioned that they kept the card as a reference document for the things the sender had been meaning to say.
“She wrote four pages about the year we’d both had, what our friendship means, where she sees me in five years, and two paragraphs about a specific afternoon in 2019 I had forgotten but that she had remembered in considerable detail,” said one birthday card recipient. “It was wonderful and also a lot for 9am on a Tuesday.”
The Genre Development
The Paris birthday card has developed as a venue for the things France’s otherwise direct culture processes through the mediating distance of a written occasion. The card’s social convention — you are expected to write something more than a signature — provides the permission structure for the things that direct conversation somehow does not quite produce. France is direct. France also has things that are better said in a birthday card format, with a drawing of a cake, where the formality of the occasion provides the cover for the sincerity of the content.
According to Psychology Today’s written expression and relationship quality research, written expression of appreciation for specific shared memories produces higher relationship quality improvements than verbal equivalents. The 847 words are doing real work. The reader keeps the card. The Tuesday is improved.
Always worth writing at Virtuosal.com.
