Korespondence

Korespondence is the act or process of exchanging written messages between people or organizations. It can describe the actual letters, emails, or other communications themselves, as well as a record of those exchanges. The term can also denote a correspondence between two things—an agreement, similarity, or conformity to a standard.

Historically, correspondence began with letters and documents carried by messengers or postal services. In business, government, and journalism, “correspondence” labeled formal exchanges, including diplomatic dispatches, official letters, and letters to the editor. A person who writes such material for others or from abroad is a correspondent.

With the growth of postal systems and literacy, formal correspondence became a central activity in education, commerce, and governance. The 19th and early 20th centuries saw standardized postal services, seals, and forms that facilitated rapid international communication. In recent decades, electronic correspondence—email, messaging apps, and other digital formats—has largely supplanted postal letters for daily use.

In mathematics and logic, correspondence denotes a relation or mapping between elements of two sets. A one-to-one correspondence is a bijection that pairs each element of one set with a unique element of another. The term is also used in philosophy and linguistics to describe a relation of agreement or alignment between concepts or data.

Modern usage remains broad. In media, a foreign or war correspondent reports from distant locations; in libraries and archives, correspondence can be a primary source for historians. In everyday language, people refer to their personal or business correspondence as the sequence of messages received and sent over time.