As you know from my previous correspondence,  I enjoy MMD every day.
However, at the risk of appearing to be Scrouge at this season, I  offer
the following observation.

Some of the submissions have become, in my opinion, overly long.  I can
understand a technical issue requiring paragraph after paragraph.  All I
am asking is that those that send articles consider that MMD is just one
of the services to go through every day.  As a result, I find myself
skimming or skipping articles in MMD that are too long; yet I would have
liked to read them in their entirety.

Anybody else feel these way? If not, disregard this submission!  If this
is too long, skip it!

Rich Lazar

 [ Rich,
 [   Its ironic that this message should be received and distributed on
 [ a day when the Digest is 1/10th the size that bothers you.  Admittedly,
 [ I have several articles that are on hold awaiting Robbie's assistance,
 [ but this holiday weekend has been particularly slow.
 [
 [ I'd like to use this as an opportunity to encourage our correspondents
 [ that want to write long articles to spend more time on editing.  Try
 [ to develop a single idea in each message.  In the same way that
 [ newspaper articles are written, include the key points early in the
 [ article so that the reader can determine if this is an article which
 [ is relevant to them.  Put the less important details towards the bottom
 [ of the article so that you get the main idea across in case the
 [ reader skips the rest of your article, or the editor feels it necessary
 [ to shorten it.  Please re-read your message to us and try to do
 [ spelling and grammatical corrections before you send it.  If you don't
 [ know how to work the editor thats part of your e-mail system, please
 [ try to learn.  Have a dictionary handy, or use the built-in spell checker
 [ that comes with your software.
 [
 [ If your article is long and is going to have questions, along the way
 [ or all at the end, please set them so they stand out (like we do for
 [ you), by indenting them differently.  This will help readers see your
 [ question if they've decided to skip some of your text.
 [
 [ Please don't send a message about two different subjects -- if someone
 [ skims or skips to the end of your message, they'll not see the second
 [ point.  In addition, your second point will be missed by our indexing
 [ procedure.
 [
 [ One last thing.  I'm hoping we'll get to the point where everyone who
 [ subscribes has access to a Web browser.  This would allow us to put
 [ really long articles on the Website and just include an abstract of
 [ the article in the Digest.  We already do this with pictures and
 [ MIDI files because most people who can handle them have Web access.
 [ We can't yet do that for text files, as __MANY__ of our readers have
 [ e-mail access only.
 [
 [ Jody