The Letters to the Editor section is one of the most popular in The Enterprise. In one respect it represents our community's public square, where all who want to be heard, can express their opinions with few restrictions. In recent weeks, though, we've published a number of letters that we knew exceeded the length allowed by our letter policy. We did so because we had the space, and the letters submitted for publication followed a thread set out by an initial letter-writer on topics of community interest.

Those days are over. We are now enforcing the 400-word limit without exception. Letters will be published in the order they are received by our office. By our measurement, a 400-word letter, including attribution, takes up approximately 15 inches of column space -- roughly the average length of a byline story.