Excellent note from a reader

As a former editor always told me: Never fight fire with fire.

 

I gotta believe anyone who picks up there vs their and then does misteak was going for comedy.

 

I'd have to agree. You don't see misteak too often (ever), let alone from someone who can differentiate when to use their/there.

 

Yep. The reader got his jollies. No need to give him a double with a reply. FIDO.

 

Anybody who takes the time to clip my column, scrawl all over it, stick a stamp on it and mail it to me -- I tend to appreciate, no matter how much they want to rip me.

 

When I was covering preps, someone clipped my story, used a stamp that said "BULLSHIT" to stamp all over it in red ink and mailed it to me. I still have the clip and to this day I have no idea who it was or what they didn't like about the story.

 

Clearly, there are worse words to use and I never would curse someone for something like that.

Why, on the other hand, are you using "drain" in a basketball story anyway?

 

Save it for a later column... drop the reference into a totally unrelated subject...
Something like "As a knuckleheaded friend used to write to me' it's a jr. high school misteak.' "

 

I once had a guy write a letter to the editor that started like this:

"Youth and ignorance is alive and well, writing sports columns for the Podunk Press."

He then proceeded to rip my column, but his problem was I had the facts and he didn't know where I got them. It involved some people as anonymous sources.

So I e-mailed him back, explained to him that sources were used in the column, but I can't reveal them. But that the first line of his letter was good. He and I exchanged pleasant e-mails from that point on.

Now, a guy who previously worked at the paper once got one of his columns sent back to him after it had been used for, well, umm, toilet paper.

So I was happy that this one was, you know, clean.

 

I have one reader who has sent me several friendly e-mails over the past couple of weeks. It started with a question, and has since grown into a very conversational tone. He even sent me a picture of his dog the other day. Good guy.

No one sends me hate mail so much...they just leave me voice mails.

 

I know your first reaction is to respond in scathing fashion, but it can only lead to bad things. I've made it a policy not to respond to angry e-mails or letters, as anything I say in them would only get me in trouble.
I do hang them on the wall, though. The typos and half-sentences can be entertaining at times.

 

I don't respond, but I do keep a hit list