As I'm writing this column on Friday morning, we have 37 contributions to our Two Cents feature waiting to be published, and that number will surely grow by the end of the day. I'm sure each person who called in, mailed or e-mailed one of these items is eager to see it printed in the newspaper.

Two Cents is a feature The Citizen launched last year to allow people to submit their opinions on news items in two sentences or less. It has become rather popular - we're getting dozens of submissions almost every day.

Unfortunately, we usually have space on page A2 for six to eight Two Cents contributions each day. On days when we don't have enough letters to the editor (which typically happens once or twice per week), we also publish Two Cents in that space on page A4, which can typically handle about 15 submissions.

Crunch the numbers and you figure that we have room roughly for as many as 86 Two Cents items or as few as 57 in a given week, depending on how many letters we're receiving.

As a result, we can't guarantee that every Two Cents submission will make the paper, although that is our goal. But for those of you who have contributed an item and wondered why you didn't read it in the paper, I'll try to explain how we make decisions.

For starters, the Two Cents is not a free-for-all, despite what people who don't like this feature might think. We're not going to publish items alleging wrongdoing that we can't corroborate. It's not a forum to spread rumors. It's meant to be a feature that allows people to comment on the news that's already been reported.

We also avoid publishing items that make no sense (no pun intended) because of the way they were presented. We do get some items that ramble or trail off in a way that if printed, would be incoherent to our readers. Keep the basic rule of this feature in mind: Items should be no longer than two sentences, and they really should be sentences.

In order to make it interesting to the readers, we also aim for some variety in the Two Cents feature. So if we have multiple items that all say the same thing, we might not print all of them. If it's related to a matter in which there are clear opposing sides, we try to print them in proportion to the volume we receive in support of each side.

Obviously we're not going to print obscene or profanity-laced comments, and while we allow for criticism of government officials in their work capacity, we try to keep the space free of personal attacks.

I hope this helps some of the frustrated Two Cents contributors understand what's going on with this feature, and I encourage people who have a specific question about a specific submission that hasn't been printed to give me a ring.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's columns appear Saturdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net