Att skriva vykort : En vardaglig skriftpraktik i början av 1900-talet

Writing Postcards. A Vernacular Writing Practice from the Early 20th Century Several new writing practices have developed in the traces of the digital revolution, e.g. blogs, texting, email and Facebook. Around the turn of the 2oth century, the result of something that can be described as a revolution in technology of writing could also be seen. By then, ordinary people had gained access to the writing technology and they were using more and more writing in their everyday life. Old and new writing practices developed in connection with artefacts such as letters, diaries, songbooks and postcards. The postcard was introduced as a new medium for communication in Europe, for short and quick messages. The postcard has a lot in common with today’s growing digital writing practices, such as texting, with regard to the length of the message, new writing conventions and the fast spreading of the writing practice. The postcard was also multimodal with both pictures and text, and the limited writing space led to new and simplified writing conventions. The new media and its writing practices very soon became a huge success among the general public. In this article, the growth of the writing practice of the postcard is presented and placed in a literacy-theoretical context with the help of the concepts of vernacular literacy and vernacular literacy practice. The writing practice of the postcard has not yet been investigated in a Swedish literacy context. The article points towards possible issues that can be further investigated from a literacy perspective