Call me crazy but if I'm writing a letter I usually use a pen

I'm just now drafting a corporate id manual and am interested in setting up their communication package in a distinctive and highly communicative way.

My letters are done with Indesign CS set in Le Monde Courrier.
My invoices are done via a Filemaker database set in Le Monde Courrier.
Booth use similar layout and Le Monde Courrier is for the content only.
http://www.typofonderie.com/alphabets/view/LeMondeCourrier

My contact info, company info, logotype are not printed via offset litho but printed by Filemaker or Indesign, to let change them depending what I currently need. My letterheads (several colors variations) are in fact printed in 2 colors but without any text on it, its just sort of background who can be used for various uses.

***

My emails are done with AppleMail, set in Georgia via my prefs, but always as plain text, so read as whatyouwant when you receive them.

My chat are done with iChat, set in Costa PTF (my side indeed)
http://www.typofonderie.com/alphabets/view/CostaPTF

Recently I've been doing letters in Handsome Pro, an OpenType handwriting face. It's a good way to test it out. Have to use InDesign to get the contextual ligatures happening.

I always put everything on one page, so size and leading etc. can vary with how much I have to say. Bit of a time-waster, but for a typographer, what better way to waste time?

When I first started writing long text I was using Quark. Now I bounce in between TextEdit, Mellel and Word. At the moment I using Auto 1 from Underware in all of my correspondence applications (including iChat).

TextEdit for writing. InDesign CS for layout. The measurements (even paper size) for personal stuff I customize to accomodate the amount of copy. For business stuff, it's always letter sized paper with margins/leading adjusted for content (I don't have letterhead).

I use Scala and Scala Sans for all of my business stuff, and mostly on my personal stuff. Sometimes I use Whitman or some other face I just discovered/licensed.

Good point Tiffany!
Yes, indeed, when its matter of writing long texts, I use a text editor, the most basic as possible, like SubEthaEdit (even with that one, via iChat functions, you can wrote in collaborative way, very fun!) Set by default in Andale, 13pt
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

Word? pffu, Well... I have Office 2004, but mostly to test fonts, I don't use such applications on the Mac, its better on Windows.

Hmmm. I am curious which "TextEdit" program Tiffany and Chris use as there are many with that name. I am looking for something to replace Word. My current workflow: enter text into Word, do some formatting (i.e. apply styles to inline quotes, headings, etc.) and then import into Indesign CS with the analogous paragraph styles defined. Does anyone have a better solution?

I realize that I am getting a little off topic. I use Myriad Pro for most official correspondence and a pen for personal correspondence.

I think that I have solved my query: I take it that TextEdit is the Apple notepad program. Is there an equivalent for Windows (excluding the minimal Notepad)?

Well, there's WordPad in Windows which is kind of like TextEdit.

Jon