A friendly word to our readers about deadlines:

The Farmville Herald's two weekly editions are dated Wednesdays and Fridays but they are actually produced earlier in the week. In order for news items, letters to the editor, church announcements and other items to be considered for a specific issue they should be submitted well before Wednesday or Friday. Sometimes we receive a submission that is given to us too late for use in the next issue. To help us publish your items it is crucial to give them to us in time to print them.

For example, our weekly editions are actually printed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The A section is generally printed by mid-afternoon, which means paste-up begins that morning. But the B section-containing editorials, letters to the editor, and classifieds-is printed early on Tuesday and Thursday morning.

The editorial pages with the letters to the editor, moreover, are designed, produced, and turned in for computer pagination on Monday and Wednesday morning. So Wednesday's editorial pages with its letters to the editor are actually put together on Monday mornings and Friday's pages are put together on Wednesday mornings.

That means, for example, a letter to the editor needs to arrive in plenty of time to be read, considered, typeset, proofread, and put into the production process in plenty of time to meet our actual production and printing deadlines. If you want something, say a letter to the editor, to be considered for a Friday edition, it is best to get it to us no later than Monday of that week, but even earlier would be best. Don't wait until the last minute. There are times when vacations, a doctor's appointment, holidays and other things mean we have to accelerate the schedule. One recent Friday editorial page actually needed to be turned into the pagination production process on that Tuesday.

So it can appear to someone unfamiliar with the production and printing facts-and most folks have no idea; why should they?-that something is intentionally withheld for a later issue when, in fact, it simply wasn't received in time and had to be used in the next edition.

The sooner you get it to us, the sooner we can start the process that leads to publication.

Thank you.

-JKW-