Andy Rooney’s segment on “60 Minutes” Sunday evening made a point that’s become increasingly obvious: Few people write letters the way they used to.

Rooney drew the patent conclusion that with e-mail almost instantaneous and almost free, the Postal Service receives less revenue because fewer people mail that way.

Of the 40-plus names on my e-mail address book, I know the street address of precious few of them. What about their phone numbers? That’s even worse. Having cordless and cell phones that store 50 numbers, we don’t actually “dial” people anymore.

The matter became increasingly apparent this week when I received calls from different recipients in different states who wondered whether my once-sharp spelling and grammar skills had taken a nosedive.

Let me explain:

In my letters, I used “remound” and “arrove” as the past tense of “remind” and “arrive.” Naturally, my friends assumed I’d “lost it,” as one of them said. For years, in correspondence with friends, I’ve taken liberties with what we call “irregular verbs,” those with a past tense that doesn’t follow the rule of adding “-ed” to verbs. And the shunning of traditional spelling rules comes about because a letter — an actual hard copy — allows me to check it, as I spell things exactly as I wish, for effect. The blogosphere gives us little time to think things out.

But why would anybody wish to become rebellious about language? For starters, when I taught, I dealt with rebellious users of the language, those who refused to follow the several hundred self-contradictory rules about English. As a seventh-grader at Immaculate Conception School, I asked language questions of Sister Mary Rigoureux, who must have thought (with some justification) that I was more interested in my question than her answer and that I’d won if the question or her answer drew a laugh.

Maybe it was a voice crying in the wilderness, a request for attention. But many of us found it strange that comparable linguistic inquisitions from some kids from Las Vegas’ more affluent neighborhoods usually prompted Sister’s declarations that “Why now that you mention it, Dearie, that’s brilliant. How perceptive of you!”

I realized how quickly my “cuteness” had worn thin as I spent after-school eternities leaning out the window and clapping erasers together.

But back to regular and irregular verbs. To test the theory, I located a list of hundreds of irregular verbs. For example, the words “bleed,” “forbid,” “forget,” “deal,” “hang,” “mistake,” “stand” and “think” require a different kind of spelling or an inflectional ending when we use them in the past tense. We don’t say “he standed” or “she thinked.” No, the rules are different for these irregular verbs.

So, as I suggested in a column a few years back, why not make all regular verbs irregular? That way we don’t have to stop and think.

When I arrove at this topic, I remound you of struggles foreigners must have trying to learn the rules. But once learned, they’re easy to follow. Remember that most of what we call verb errors are actually an application by analogy. If the past tense of “show” is “showed,” can we then use “throwed”? So, people often say things like “growed” or “bited.” And notice that many of the most common verbs are irregular, words like go, do, see, feed, think, eat, run and throw. Once we get the rhythm of the irregularizing of regular verbs, reading is easy.

Here goes:

Monday evening, a female coworker called frantically, saying she needed a short-term loan. It appears that she froke out (break, broke/ freak, froke) as she pought (seek, sought; peek, pought) at online clothing outlets and needed to feed her bank account before the next day’s accounting.

She said she fit (light, lit / fight, fit) the urge to splurge, but soon her conservative tendency bote (write, wrote/ bite, bote) the dust and she grun madly as she sought to find clothes which maught (catch, caught …) her goal for “a new look.” She felt she ned (feed, fed …) a new look for the upcoming holiday bash as she glid down the aisle; how else could she capture everyone’s attention and be a big hit?

So, she explained, she leant (mean, meant) into the task, and as it snew heavily outdoors, she had no unexpected visitors and no interruptions. That made her glad it had snown.

Voila! Her wardrobe throve! She lood (stand, stood) great outfits and never wank at the price tags. Bereft of all shame, she mused, “This is great. I’ve never really lave (give, gave …) like this before!” She pelt (feel, felt) out her bankroll and credit card and son (win, won) shamelessly, overspending her budget. Indeed she plew the part of a bigshot.

Poor thing. Who will bail her out this time?