LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: READERS ARE ENTITLED TO OWN STYLE

When readers make convincing arguments, they should be heeded. This is exactly what happened last week.

John C. Bierk, who is a regular contributor to the opinion columns of this newspaper, made his point quickly: Editors shouldn't make so many changes in material submitted by readers for publication.

For years, I have been in the school of newspaper editors that preaches consistency and adherence to what we call style.

Style doesn't have anything to do with fashion or apparel. Newspaper style is all about how certain words and punctuation marks are used and about how some words are spelled.

English is such a fluid language. Despite all the grammar and spelling rules you learned in school, there are many variables. Newspapers tend to adopt one way of writing, and they call that their style.

Some large newspapers have their own stylebooks. Among the best-known are the stylebooks of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. But many newspapers have adopted the stylebook of the Associated Press. This avoids confusion in the handling of wire-service stories and newspaper-produced stories.

What concerns Bierk is that readers who contribute to the exchanges of ideas in a newspaper don't necessarily conform to the newspaper's style. Nor should they.

I have been in this business 29 years, and I have regularly edited letters to the editor, guest columns, freelance articles and staff-written stories the same way: to conform to style. But you know what? Bierk is right. When readers take the time to share their thoughts, part of the sharing process is the style they choose to express themselves.

Not all ice cream tastes the same or has the same texture. But most of us switch from one ice cream to another for variety and at-the-moment preference. What readers choose to spend time reading must be much the same. Not everyone wants to read the same author over and over. Readers want variety.

So here is the deal. Bierk and other contributors to the pages of the Southeast Missourian will have their writing styles honored. Of course we will continue to correct spelling errors and some other obvious mistakes writers -- including those who are professionals -- sometimes make. But for all intents and purposes we will let the writer express herself or himself in whatever style she or he chooses.

Writers who are on the news staff of this newspaper, will still conform to this newspaper's style for the sake of consistency.

So, John, I hope this allays your concerns about submitting your thoughts to the Southeast Missourian. Your ideas, and those of all of our readers, are important to the vitality and interest level of this newspaper.

And one more thing about the last piece of writing submitted by Bierk: Some readers noticed several spelling errors. Those weren't Bierk's doing. I would like to be able to blame the misspellings on a computer. But that would be only partially correct. Thanks to modern electronic wizardry, we are able to place a typewritten page in a device that scans the page and turns the words into computer text. Sometimes the scanner mistakes some letter combinations. That is what happened with Bierk's article. However, once the article is in computer text, there is a wonderful program that checks spelling. No one used that program in the case of Bierk's piece. That was human error. We are all aware now of the need to be more careful about this.

R. Joe Sullivan is editor of the Southeast Missourian.