As you may have noticed these past couple of weeks, letters to the editor are really picking up as we move full steam ahead into election season.

As a reminder, our letters policy is printed at the bottom of page 6A of each week’s paper. If you plan on sending letters in the coming months, now might be a good time to peruse that brief statement as a refresher on what is and is not allowed in submissions to The Times. We’re more relaxed with comments pertaining to those who hold or are running for local office, but that only goes so far. We understand that some letters are going to be more negative, but there are ways to make points/arguments without resorting to name-calling and the like.

Also, as a reminder, the Monday noon deadline is for consideration to be included in a given week’s paper, not a guarantee. Most newspapers have a set amount of space for letters, but we try to get in as many as possible. However, all sorts of factors can impact that. If we’re running low on space, layout work gets too tight or a letter requires more time to fact check, it might not make it to print if it comes in too close to the deadline.

In other words, the earlier you can get a letter in each week, the better.