As I glance at the long list of letters to the editor that are still waiting to be published, I'm both pleased and a little bewildered.

I'm pleased because for roughly the past month, we've seen a definite increase in the number of submissions for the letters page. Prior to this spike, we would be forced to run a wire column once per week, and sometimes multiple times, in the space on page A4 devoted to letters. But lately there's been no shortage of reader-submitted and signed commentaries.

That bewilders me slightly because we normally see heavier letter volume only when there's an abundance of highly controversial news. While we've seen a good number of interesting stories the past few weeks, it hasn't seemed to be too out-of-the-ordinary.

Not that I'm complaining. A filled letters page is always our preference. Letters are one of the most popular features we have in the paper; the problem in recent years is that fewer people are writing them with the growth of online commentary, which is often anonymous.

The higher volume of letters has meant that writers are waiting a little longer to see their submissions in print. I've had a few phone calls from people asking about the status of letters that they knew had been approved, because the paper had contacted them for confirmation.

Unfortunately, we often can't tell the caller precisely when the letter will appear. Unless we know the letter has already been placed on the page for the next day's paper, we can only make an estimate for time of publication.

There are several reasons behind the uncertainty.

For one thing, the letters page has a defined amount of space, and although letters can be no longer than 400 words, they come in all sorts of lengths at or below the limits. Some might be two sentences. Some might take up the full 400 words.

Each day the page designer's task is to find the right combination of letters to fill the space evenly - it's sort of like putting together a puzzle.

Two other factors are also at work. We do attempt to run older submissions ahead of newer ones, and we attempt to provide a variety of topics on the page to maximize reader interest.

Maybe there's a math wizard out there who can help me, but to my knowledge, there is no precise formula that can put all of these variables together and spit out a publication date.

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