How to submit a letter to the editor

(1.) Submit your letter to David Wilkinson, executive director and publisher, at [email protected]. We’ll take it by the postal service, if necessary, but not having to re-key your letter is a big plus for us.

(2.) You’ll make your point more effectively if you keep it to a few hundred words. That may seem short (though, remember — Lincoln was able to keep his Gettysburg Address to 270 words). The letters page is a forum for a variety of voices, and we want many readers to have a turn. Aim to make your case with a point or two, not a full-length opinion article.

(3.) Take as your starting point an article or opinion piece that appeared on baptistnews.com. This page is a place to comment on a conversation already begun.

(4.) Keep your letter unique to us, not something you’ve also submitted to or posted on other media platforms. No one likes mass distributed commentary, and that includes us.

(5.) We reserve the right to edit for space, clarity, civility and accuracy, or to not publish your letter based on these standards. And it goes without saying (though we’ll say it) that we won’t accept racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such. We recognize the difference between criticizing a particular organization or viewpoint, on the one hand, and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age, on the other.

(6.) We’ll do our best to verify factual accuracy. As Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. There can be a fine line between hard fact and deeply held opinion. But we do try to verify the facts, either checking them ourselves or asking writers for sources of information.

(7.) Include your full name. Anonymous letters and letters written under pseudonyms won’t be considered. We’ll also contact you to verify that you wrote it (for your protection and ours), so also include your home address, email address and phone number. We’ll keep those confidential, of course.

(8.) We won’t publish every letter we receive. We want this page to be as engaging as we believe the rest of our content is, so we’ll be selective. And, yes, we determine the selection criteria. That said, we won’t exclude letters simply because we disagree with them. It’s not our opinions that determine the content of this page. It’s yours.