Putting your best words forward — briefly A primer on submitting letters to the editor By: Editorial Posted: 2:01 AM CDT Thursday, Jun. 22, 2023

Opinion

“An honest opinion, truly held.”

That’s the standard that “fair comment” is usually measured by — and fair comment is what you could describe as legally acceptable opinion writing.

It’s the measure that courts have used to decide whether letters to the editor and op-ed pieces are acceptable views on policy makers and other figures, contrasted with what crosses the line into defamation.

But making the decision on letters to the editor — and editing them — for our pages goes a little further than just the bare legality of your submission.

It may be your honestly held belief, but it’s also our page, our space and our audience (an audience we’re willing to share with you), which means there are limits to what we’ll accept.

It’s not just the free-for-all that people are used to on sites such as Twitter.

It might be fun to describe a public figure as ‘loathsome human dung-beetle and idiot,’ but it doesn’t thoughtfully advance your argument.

It might be fun to describe a public figure as “loathsome human dung-beetle and idiot,” but it doesn’t thoughtfully advance your argument — or, frankly, stand any chance of making it to our pages.

And if “human dung-beetle” is out, “constant liar,” “traitor to Canada,” “groomer” and a whole range of what passes for the niceties of internet trolling repartee won’t make it either.

If you feel that unnecessarily ties your hands, you are certainly welcome to start your own website or paper, and build your own audience.

Consider this a 50-cent tour of the letters-to-the-editor process.

To recap, we like straightforward argument, pithy but polite analysis, and much prefer arguments that bring light to an issue, rather than just heat.

Some practicalities?

There are things that make your letter more likely to appear — and far more likely to be read.

One of them is something that writers of all types are told regularly: think about your audience. Part of that involves thinking about the sweet spot that makes your argument easily available to the most eyes.

If you want your letter to be effective and well-read, a pithy, well-thought-out 175 to 200 words (or even less) works best — much longer than that, and it’s hard for us to use promptly.

Clear language is excellent.

Funny is great, but has its own downsides — you have to be able to pull it off. Many among us can’t.

The best way to respond to something you might disagree with, or even something you might agree with, is to respond in a way that lets us get it into the paper before the story, column or letter you’re responding to has faded behind the distant mists of time.

(The distant mists of time, from a daily newspaper point of view, close in at around four days, give or take, unless the issue is a particularly trenchant one such as Winnipeg potholes, endless roadwork and delays, or the unceasing number of attempts governments make to fall on their own political faces.)

As one letter-reader — the very audience you should be thinking about first and foremost when you write —pointed out recently, “Let’s return to short, thought-provoking letters from more readers.”

It’s easy enough to use the tools available on our website for getting letters to the editor to us, and it makes our workday much more straightforward to have plenty of letters to choose from.

It also gets the best of letters to our readers.

That’s what we’d like to be able to provide. It’s why the page in our print edition says “Our view, your say” at the top.