How to have your opinion not heard

Under my desk here at The Herald-Dispatch is a box of letters to the editor that will not be printed in The Herald-Dispatch. Every day, it seems, a new letter goes in that box.

We want to publish as many reader letters as we can, but some letters just can’t be printed.

Rather than explain how to get your letter in the paper, I thought I'd talk here about how to not get your letter published in Voice of the People:

> Do not include your address or phone number. We need to verify authorship of letters, and sometimes we must talk to writers about problems with their letters. If we can’t contact you, we won’t run your letter.

> Write a letter that is at least 1,000 words long. We have several spots for letters on the Voices page. Most letters are in the range of 20 to 250 words. Shorter letters are more likely to be published than longer ones. If you have a good letter that’s about 300 words long, we’ll put it on the left-hand side of the page. If you have a particularly good piece that’s 450 to 550 words, that qualifies as a guest column. But please call me first before you submit a guest column. There are certain criteria they must meet.

Oh, and please don't say your piece is so good that 1,000 words is barely enough. In that case, you might want to find another publication to publish your piece. We hardly ever have that much room in the space we are given.

> Don’t sign your name. We don’t run anonymous letters. These go straight to the “toss” box.

> Address personalities rather than issues. You can criticize the governor, the mayor or an editor for a decision he made, but don’t say he’s ugly or he dresses funny.

> Use illegible handwriting. If we look at your letter and it looks like you wrote “In gong tooth horse,” it’s probably going into the “toss” box.

> if u email it dont use punctuation and dont use capital letters this makes it too hard for us to read the more we have to work with it the more likely we are to make a mistake handling it you know what if youre too lazy to use punctuation and capital letters then we dont want to deal with it either

> OR YOU CAN TYPE IN ALL CAPS. SHOUT AT US SOME, WHY DON'T YOU? DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH TO PUT STUFF IN PROPER CASE, ALL BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO LAZY TO USE THE SHIFT KEY?

> Send it in the day before the event you’re writing about. The editorial page is one of the first pages we put together every day. On normal days, it’s ready by noon for the following day. If your letter gets here Tuesday afternoon and you want to tell people about something happening Wednesday morning, you’re probably out of luck, at least as far as the editorial page is concerned. Other pages, we can accommodate. Editorial page, out of luck. We do the Friday and Saturday pages on Thursday, and we do the Sunday and Monday pages on Friday. If your letter needs to run one of those days, it’s important it gets here a few days ahead of time.

> Copy and paste something from the Internet. Sometimes these get past us, but sometimes they don’t. We want letters that are the original work of the writer. If we think it’s a copy-and-paste job, it’s probably going in the “toss” box.

That’s about it. We want letters to the editor. It's one of the most-read parts of the paper. In this day of Internet forums and such, the number of letters has dropped. That's why we've relaxed some of our rigid rules.

Shameless plug ends now.