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Editorial: Keep it brief

Please don’t get us wrong: We want your opinions. We value them. But more and more, we’ve been inundated with letters to the editor that are as long as some doctoral dissertations.

On this page, we request that letters “should not exceed 200 words.” In practice, we’ve stretched that limit to as much as 500 words, where we have drawn a line. But people always want to push that limit.

The reason for the limit is a simple one: We want your opinion … and we also want room for your neighbor’s opinion. Some letters to the editor, if run in their entirety, would fill the page. And that’s just not fair to everyone else.

So, if you don’t see your letter in these columns, consider submitting a shorter version. And yes, all the other rules apply: providing an address and phone number for verification purposes, as well as a physically signed copy.

Robert Frost famously opined that writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net. While our letters to the editor don’t normally r...

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