[Fe2002]

I'm in a semi-open adoption - emailing, phone calls, text msgs, one visit thus far. I'm very happy with my relationship with DD's birthmom.

In any case, I've saved all of our email correspondance and was planning on putting them in a scrapbook for DD. DD's birthmom has sent some really heartfelt emails and touching text msg over the past 2 years. Here is my "dilemma", should I leave them real and raw or pretty them up for the scrapbook? A lot of the msgs are in "text speak" and there are a few typos...

If I dress them up (fix all errors, change fonts) I don't want DD to think I made them up... but If I leave them as-is, I don't want DD to pre-judge her birthmom because of text speak when she thought she was just emailing me.

I did inform DD's birthmom of my intentions (to make a scrapbook) last week.

[Magic_Hat]

I've saved all our correspondence btw us and DD's birth mom and grandma too.

I think I would fix the actual typos just so it's not hard to figure out what bmom was trying to say but I wouldn't change font or text speak. Maybe you could somehow make it clear what was an email and what was a text like add a heading with the date before the actual message.
Something like this:

Text from R on 5/15/09

Email from R on 6/20/09

[Nevada Jen]

I would clean them up however you want to. Unless you are going to use the actual original printed out version of them in the book. In my mind a scrapbook is the artists interpretation of memories. You might consider saving the printouts in a pocket in the back of the book though.

[ScrapMonkey]

Jen beat me to it. I would use whatever parts you want to and make them readable, but keep a copy of the original message for her when she's older.