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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
July 14 - July 20, 2005 Edition
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Watch it July 14, 2005 By Doug Cabral The Times receives 20 or more letters each week, and we publish nearly every one. We often remind readers that we welcome their letters and delight in their eagerness to discuss their views of Vineyard matters. Because they know what they want to say and why they want to say it, the letter writers are always a step or two ahead of us, and we often find ourselves scrambling to adapt our letter guidelines to the changing tone and pattern of written communication among Islanders. From time to time, it’s necessary to say a few words about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to Letter to the Editor. So, here is a collection of nagging issues that confront Times editors as they receive letters from you and prepare them for publication: Irregardless is not a word. It pretends to be one in some letters sent to The Times for publication, but we are on guard against such imposters, and we step right in. Something that is unique is entirely and always one of a kind. It cannot be approaching the condition of uniqueness and be unique at the same time. Consider for instance the phrases “very unique”, “almost unique”, “so unique”, “pretty much unique”, “unbelievably unique.” Each of these wears a suit of clothes that whispers meaning but screams nonsense. By the way, to give credit where it’s owed, the lattermost of these phrases may have the color of truth about it, although absolutely not what the letter writer had in mind. Comprise, the transitive verb, means to include, to sort of get your arms around. As, Martha’s Vineyard comprises six towns. Martha’s Vineyard is not comprised of six towns. The verb acts on its own with respect to the things it’s speaking about. You don’t need to know what is is. One more example: The committee comprises the chairmen of the board of selectmen in each town Niggardly means stingy or covetous. It has nothing to do with any racial or ethnic group. Still, the sound of it can get a letter writer into hot water, so we avoid it. Citizens of this and other countries may be deprived of their rights and privileges for any of a variety of reasons, some legal and some not. When it happens, the citizen is disfranchised, not disenfranchised. The right to vote or hold elected office or spit in the street, or whatever it might be, was a franchise or license, and the citizen has been dis-sed. That’s disfranchisement. A target limit of 800 to 1,000 words for letters means that what we’re hoping for is 200 to 300, that 1,200 or 1,500 or 2,000 are not even the in the 800-1,000 word ballpark, that it’s not how many words you use, it’s whether you use the right ones and how you arrange the ones you select that makes the point you are trying to make. Pouring the words on can drown your thought. People send us letters describing the horrible treatment they received from a shop owner, a restaurant owner, a landlord, a tenant, a lawyer, a cop, another driver in a (red, black, silver, Chevy, Ford, Toyota — you choose) pickup, a bus driver, a taxi driver, a former lover, an ex-husband, the next door neighbor with the awesome sound system. As a rule, we don’t publish such letters, juicy as the stories might seem. The letter writer may be justified in exposing the aforementioned tenant, landlord, cop, etc. for the psychopath he or she really is, but we don’t know if the letter writer is a) correct, b) truthful, c) delusional. And, unless several complaints accumulate about the same neighbor, ex-husband, shop owner, etc. we are unable to detail a reporter to make a thorough and responsible independent investigation of the circumstances that gave rise to the letter. For the most part, it’s inside baseball to us. (Wait a minute, strike that part about the lawyer and the cop. Of such matters we will often take an investigatory interest. The same is true of stories concerning elected and appointed public officials.) How do we choose the letters we feature? Although we publish most letters, some get special, jump to the head of the line, standout treatment. They earn this prominence by being well written, timely, topical, and fresh, which means not about some dried up topic or an issue whose airing is more appropriate in another publication — Foreign Policy, for instance. Brevity helps too. Who chooses the headlines? Generally, we do. Do you have to be a real person to get a letter published? Of course, and you must show us that you are the real person you say you are. Is anything off limits? Absolutely, but we can’t tell you what until you ask, so keep those cards and letters coming. |
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