BEFORE YOU CLICK SUBMIT
Watch your word count. Our maximum is 200 words for letters; 450 for guest columns. You are limited to one published letter or column every 30 days.
Our Insight staff does not have the resources to verify information in your letter. The quickest way to assure your letter will be accepted is to use information verified by our reporters in published stories.
Address local issues. We give priority to local issues when choosing which letters to publish.
Address public -- not private -- issues. Private issues include compliments or complaints about businesses, or divorce or child custody disputes in the court system.
Letters or guest columns are subject to editing for length or clarity. All submissions must include the writer's name, address and a daytime phone number for confirmation. Your name and town will be published and posted with your letter or guest column.
Any submission to the Rockford Register Star or rrstar.com may be published in print, electronic or other forms.
Don’t keep the argument going on forever. We publish a comment and then rebuttal to that comment. We don’t allow rebuttal to rebuttals. Make a new point.
Be original. Don’t repeat the messages of other letter writers. We have limited space and cannot publish repetitive messages.
Be clear and concise, follow rules of grammar and check your work. We will reject letters that are sloppy, include multiple misspellings or do not meet a standard for readability.
Do not use capital letters. Let the strength of your point speak for itself.
Be sparing with exclamation points. (See above.)
If you put something in quotation marks, make sure those are the exact words of the speaker. If you use quote marks to be cute or to ridicule something, your readers may not be in on the joke.
Enjoy sharing your perspective. If you aren’t having fun – if you don’t feel passionate about your point – there’s no faking it. Get up from your chair and try again later.
* Attention letter writers: If your e-mail provider is AOL, you must make the Rockford Register Star an approved sender. If you do not take this step, we will not be able to correspond with you and your letter might not be published. All mail from the Opinions department is being read by the America Online service as unsolicited bulk mail and is being blocked before we can contact you. To remedy this problem, include the return address for the Opinions department — opinions@rrstar.com — as an allowed address. To learn how to do this, sign in to your AOL mail service, click on Help (to the right of the AOL Mail icon) and then click on Mail Help. Follow the instructions for "Block or Unblock Sender with AOL® Mail on the Web Mail Controls."
