What 648 letters from 45 countries say about how people write, June 2025 to October 2026.
The median pen pal letter on Lettie is 179 characters long, 24% are written between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., and replies that come are written a median 4.8 hours after the letter lands. From 648 human-written letters across 45 countries, counted on 2026-10-11.
The median letter is 179 characters. A quarter are shorter than 100 and a quarter longer than 397. First letters and replies are about the same length. Countries with at least 20 letters:
| Sender country | Median length (characters) | Letters |
|---|---|---|
| Philippines | 292 | 21 |
| United Kingdom | 241 | 25 |
| Nigeria | 204 | 22 |
| India | 196 | 83 |
| Türkiye | 161 | 65 |
| South Korea | 143 | 88 |
| United States | 140 | 156 |
Character counts depend on the script: Korean packs more meaning into each character than English, so a shorter Korean letter is not a shorter message.
| Local time | Share of letters |
|---|---|
| 6 a.m. – noon | 25% |
| Noon – 6 p.m. | 29% |
| 6 p.m. – 10 p.m. | 14% |
| 10 p.m. – 2 a.m. | 24% |
| 2 a.m. – 6 a.m. | 8% |
The busiest hour is 10 p.m., and Saturday is the busiest day (21% of letters). Weekdays range from 11% to 16%.
| Median | Range | Letters | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery within one country | 1.6 h | up to 1.9 h | 33 |
| Delivery between countries | 10 h | 3 – 23.8 h | 266 |
| From arrival to reply written | 4.8 h | 26% within 1 h · 87% within 24 h | 101 |
Delivery is set by distance on purpose (see delivery times by city). Reply times only count letters that got a reply.
| First word | Share of first letters (Latin script) |
|---|---|
| Hello | 20% |
| Hi | 19% |
| Hey | 9% |
| I … | 9% |
| Dear | 2% |
Almost half of these first letters (48%) open with Hello, Hi or Hey, which is one reason a first line that starts with a scene stands out. Ideas: 30 first lines for a pen pal letter.
Source: Lettie's own database, queried on 2026-10-11. 648 letters written by people between June 2025 to October 2026: letters in conversations and letters released for strangers to pick up. Letters by the app's AI characters, developer and test accounts, deleted letters and accounts without a valid country are excluded. Only the first 60 characters of first letters were read, by a script, to count first words; no letter text is published.
Writing times use the sender's local time, so only countries with a single time zone are counted (461 letters). Delivery times cover letters written since Lettie 2.0 (15 September 2026). The community is small, so treat these as a snapshot; this page is updated as it grows. Where the letters go is on the letter map.
On Lettie the median letter is 179 characters, about the length of one short paragraph. Half of all letters fall between 100 and 397 characters (648 letters, counted 2026-10-11).
24% of letters on Lettie are written between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, and the busiest single hour is 10 p.m.. Saturday is the busiest day with 21% of letters (461 letters from single-time-zone countries).
When a reply comes on Lettie, the median time from a letter arriving to the reply being written is 4.8 hours; 87% are written within a day (101 replies).
In 246 first letters written in Latin script on Lettie, 20% open with "Hello", 19% with "Hi" and 9% with "Hey". Only 2% start with "Dear".
Last updated: 2026-10-11