This week, to paraphrase a famous politician, I feel your pain.
As editor I frequently get taken to task for insisting that people stay within our 350 word limit for Cook County News-Herald letters to the editor. I understand the frustration of trying to fit what you want to say in limited space. That is why, once in awhile, in keeping with the letters guidelines at the bottom of the page, we occasionally let someone go a bit longer. If we only have one or two letters, we can let a writer use a few more words.
If we have three or more letters, it is more difficult and we more stringently enforce the limit. I know it’s tough and I so appreciate the folks who write concisely. I know it is hard to “write short.” I live with the challenge almost every week.
Unorganized Territory sits on the page next to the letters and under the ever-controversial Gitche-Gitche-Gumee. The number of words that I am allowed is determined by the number of letters we’ve received and by how small we can shrink Carson Haring’s editorial cartoon.
If I am stumped for a column idea and don’t know how I’ll come up with a few hundred words—I have space for 1,000 words. If I have a burning topic I want to talk about—I’m restricted to 500 words or less. I’ve become a master at self-editing. I write a first draft and count words. Then I spend some agonizing time deleting and rearranging superfluous words and phrases. Phrases such as “I believe…” or “in order to” can easily be deleted without changing important content, but there is a limit to how much can be cut.
That is the case this week. This is the third column I’ve started, as the deadline looms nearer and nearer. Because of this week’s abundance of letters, I’m allocated only 400 words. I started a column on current national events impacting free speech. However, when I got to 500 words, I realized there was no way it could be edited to fit. I started a commentary about my granddaughters and the American Girl doll craze—also too long.
Even this short column is too long. It was 423 words, then 412, and finally, after tweaking and tweaking, it is 402 words, so I must go. I have no room to reiterate that I feel your pain.
Anybody can have ideas—the
difficulty is to express them
without squandering a quire
of paper on an idea that ought
to be reduced to one glittering
paragraph.
Mark Twain
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