DavidEC wrote:General tips: Once you have written your letter, go back over it and ruthlessly eliminate any words which are not necessary, and find phrases and combinations to keep your letter length as short as possible. It could be something as simple as 'our children's fragile minds' instead of 'the fragile minds of our children'. Every bit counts because editors like quick, soundbitey letters which don't hog too many column inches.
Can I suggest some alterations SCrawl?
Those are good tips, to be sure, but:
SCRawl wrote:Thanks for weighing in, folks. The deed is done; I've submitted it using a (believable) pseudonym. This all becomes much ado about nothing, though, if they don't print the letter. I half-suspect that dozens of people have submitted essentially the same letter, so mine might get bumped for that reason.
Oops. Should read more of the thread before responding. Still, hopefully we'll have a second opportunity - the British newspapers at the moment are filled with "Christian foundations of society" bullshit provoked by a court ruling over Jerry Springer: The Opera.
Good thought, DavidEC, but as has been pointed out, the letter has been submitted. The paper did e-mail me back, requesting my real name, address, and phone number, and I provided them. I judge that if they're to print the letter, it will be Sunday or Wednesday, as they only publish three days per week.
(Just in case someone might have gotten the idea that this is a real newspaper, well, let's just say that it's not quite up to the London Telegraph's standards. It's delivered to most residences in Burlington (a city of around 160k people), and focuses on local events. In other words, it's a very local newspaper.)
73% of all statistics are made up, including this one.
SCRawl wrote:Good thought, DavidEC, but as has been pointed out, the letter has been submitted. The paper did e-mail me back, requesting my real name, address, and phone number, and I provided them. I judge that if they're to print the letter, it will be Sunday or Wednesday, as they only publish three days per week.
As mentioned above, most newspapers require your contact information when writing to the editors. If nothing else, it's to confirm that you did indeed send them a letter and not someone else claiming to be you. I imagine you could simply ask to have your identity hidden upon publication for any number of reasons and they should accommodate you.
Reading your post, I find it really really hilarious how religious nuts always say, "Oh ya, my religion is a religion of peace, benevolence and tolerance," and yet, the moment you say something against it, they wouldn't stop at killing you.
