Tap Reply on a letter and choose: type it, handwrite it, or draft it on a board first. All three send through your own mail account and are kept with the letter they answer.

The three doors

• ⌨ Type the reply — the composer, with the subject already threaded and To filled in. The To line knows your address book, so adding someone is a few letters and a tap.
• ✍️ Handwrite the reply — a pad addressed to the sender. Write, add an optional typed line, Send.
• 🃏 Draft on a board first — the letter becomes a reply card you can put on a Pickings board, a Synthesize page or today’s picks, to answer later with the letter’s opening words in front of you.

Handwriting a reply

The pad is a note page on stationery. A letterhead — To, Re, the date — and ruled lines are printed under your ink, and they travel inside the picture, so the reader receives a letter on paper rather than a floating scribble. The handwriting rides as a picture beside the text; the typed line, if you add one, is what threads, quotes and searches. No board, no second surface: the pad is the reply.

When it sends, the finished letter files itself as a pick on today’s note, so a handwritten reply is findable among your notes afterwards. A failed send files nothing.

Typing a reply

The composer is the same one a fresh letter uses. From follows the account the letter arrived on, then your pinned default. Attach files with the clip, up to 20 MB. Closing with words in the body asks once before discarding; a reply you have not typed into yet closes without ceremony.

What the reply carries

Replies go out over your own mail account, so the recipient sees a normal email from you, threaded under their message. The reply is recorded as a sent letter in your kept pile, and the original is kept forever alongside it.

Reading back the thread

Every letter has All our letters in its menu: everything in or out with that person, newest first, as one thread. See Every contact is a correspondence.

On the Watch

The wrist shows unread subjects and can read them aloud; tap or swipe to mark read. Replies are a phone-sized job and stay on the phone.

On Android

The same three doors. The handwritten reply on the Boox uses the same stationery, and the two apps write the same kept pile, so a reply made on one shows as sent on the other after sync.