Writing a letter that gets printed

The address is printed on the letters page. That is the whole barrier. No title, no organisation, no media contact, nobody’s permission, and you can do the entire thing tonight, which makes this the most accessible piece of media work there is and almost nobody attempts it.

Being nervous about putting your name in print is the correct response and not a sign you are unsuited to it. Your name and your town sit on a page strangers read. That is a reason to write carefully, not a reason to stay off the page.

Why a small thing is worth doing

The letters page is read, and in many papers it is among the best read pages there is. Readers who skip the leader column read the letters.

It is also read by the people who write the paper. Editors and reporters see what lands on their own page, and a run of considered letters on a subject tells a newsroom that the subject has an audience. That is a slower effect than a correction and a more durable one.

And a published letter is a citable public record. Months later you can point at it, quote it in a complaint, or hand it to somebody who asked whether anyone had objected at the time. It outlives the argument that prompted it.

What this page cannot do. It cannot tell you any particular paper’s word limit, its submission address or its house rules. Those are printed on the letters page itself, and finding them takes a few minutes.

Before you write about any named person. What you can safely say about a living, named individual differs by country, and this page states no country’s law. If your draft names or clearly identifies somebody, check locally before you send it. The kind of body that knows is a media law clinic, a journalists’ union, or a civil liberties organisation that advises on publication. Write down who told you, what they said and when.

Speed decides more than quality

A letter answers something published in the last day or two. Editors are filling tomorrow’s page from today’s paper, and a letter about a piece from last month has nowhere to go.

For a daily, aim at the same day or the next morning. For a weekly, aim within a day or two of it appearing. If you read something at breakfast that made you put the paper down, write it before lunch.

The cost of working this fast is real. You will send letters you would have phrased better with a week to think. Reading the draft aloud once before you send catches most of it, and that is the only quality control the form allows you.

One point, two hundred words

Aim at 150 to 250 words, and the shorter one wins. A letter of 120 words that makes one point clearly beats a letter of 400 that makes three.

Long letters are not read charitably. They are cut by somebody who does not know which sentence was your best, or they are dropped for something shorter that arrived at the same time. Nobody will tell you which happened.

One point is the structural rule of the whole form. Not one theme with three supporting arguments. One point, stated, supported once, finished. Everything you leave out is what makes the thing you kept visible.

The opening line does the work

Reference the piece and the date, then say the thing. The editor needs to know what you are answering before they can judge whether you belong on the page.

Weak: I have followed your coverage of antisemitism for some time and have a number of thoughts about the direction it has taken.

Strong: Your report on the vandalism at the community centre (12 June) called the graffiti “anti-Israel”. It was a swastika.

The rule underneath: name the piece, name the date, land the point, all inside two sentences. What you save there is what buys you the rest.

Write from where you stand

A letter that says who you are and why this reaches you gets printed over a letter that argues in the abstract. Editors are choosing voices as much as arguments, and the abstract version is available to them from a hundred people.

You do not need a credential. Eleven years in the same congregation is a standing. A parent at the school is a standing. Having walked past that wall every morning is a standing.

The trade is that standing means exposure. Naming your synagogue, your workplace or your children’s school identifies you to every reader, including hostile ones. Your first name, surname and town is the usual floor, and beyond that you are choosing how findable you are.

A short letter, written out

Your report on the fire at the synagogue in Northgate (14 July) described it as a suspected arson attack on a religious building.

It was the third attack on that building in a year. Not on religious buildings in general. On ours.

I have prayed there for eleven years, and last week my grandson asked me whether it is still safe to go. The word for what is happening is antisemitism. A paper that will not print the word makes it harder for the rest of us to say it out loud.

Rachel Adler, Northgate

That is 96 words. Notice what it leaves out. No list of other incidents, no guess at the reporter’s motives, no detour into the Middle East, no request for anything. One point, from somebody with a reason to make it.

What gets you rejected

Length. Covered above, and the commonest cause.

Lateness. The page has moved on and there is nowhere to put you.

No contact details. Most papers bin an unverifiable letter without reading it. Give them what they ask for.

Arguing with another letter writer. You are writing to the paper, not conducting a feud on its page. Answer the article. If you are answering a previous letter, answer the point in it and never the person.

Anything that reads as organised. This one is worth saying plainly. Identical or near-identical letters from several people are visible to an editor almost immediately, because they are all reading the same postbag. When they spot it, they bin the lot and they remember the source. It discredits every sender, including the people who wrote in good faith.

If you are in a group that circulates a suggested letter, take the point and throw away the wording. Write your own sentences from your own position. Three genuinely different letters beat thirty copies, and thirty copies are worse than nothing.

The practical bits

They need your real name, your town and a phone number, and usually an email. The phone number is not printed. It is there so somebody can confirm you exist.

They may edit, sometimes heavily and sometimes in a way that loses the sentence you cared about. That is the deal and there is no appeal.

Expect no reply, and no warning before publication. Chasing is not a good use of the relationship.

Many papers only accept letters not sent elsewhere. The letters page usually says so, and it is almost always best to send to one paper at a time and wait a few days.

When it is not printed

Most of the time, it is not printed. A large paper receives far more letters than it has column inches, so non-publication says nothing about your letter.

The draft is not wasted. It is now thirty seconds of a radio phone-in, the first paragraph of a complaint to the outlet, a post you can put up under your own name, or the spine of the next letter when the subject comes round again.

The people who appear on letters pages regularly are the people who write regularly. Not the best writers, the ones still sending. Roughly one letter a month to any one paper is a rhythm that keeps you unremarkable in the right way. Weekly letters to the same address get you known as the person who always writes, and that is its own kind of rejection.

Write the cue, not the intention

Fill in the blanks146 words

“When I feel ready” is not a cue. Before you write yours, two questions from memory. What has to be in your first sentence for a letters editor to keep reading past it? And what is the one thing that gets a letter spiked regardless of how well it is written?

Action. If I read something in tomorrow’s paper that makes me put it down, then I will open a blank document before I make coffee and write 200 words inside twenty minutes.

Coping. If I find myself on the third paragraph and still explaining background, then I will delete everything above my actual point and send what is left.

If it is not printed by the end of the week, then I will keep the draft in a folder called Letters and use the first two sentences the next time the subject comes round.