I HAVE written here before about how things have changed over the years on our Letters Pages. Some conventions have been dropped, some modified.

Our letters these days don’t start with “Sir, -”, now regarded as an anachronism (incidentally, one or two of our readers still sign themselves “Your obedient servant”, which is classy, if in no way true). We no longer publish full addresses, though we require these details to be supplied for verification purposes; as you’ll know, we print names and home towns or cities only. This can be regarded as a sad but telling sign of these more confrontational times.

We now, owing to pressure on space and the volume of correspondence received, have to set an upper limit on the number of words; it currently stands at 500, although that may be reviewed at a later date.

There is one convention, however, that has become more problematic these days.

We rightly assume a high level of intelligence among Herald readers, and take it as read that you keep up with current affairs, thanks in no small part to this august journal. We do, though, try to give points of reference to help in that regard. We will include in parenthesis references to help point you to earlier coverage or discussion on the topic concerned. Hence in a letter commenting on a previous day’s coverage, for example, you will see something along the lines of (“Ambushed by allies, PM finally admitted defeat”, The Herald, July 8) or (Letters, July 8). It is always handy if the reader includes this note – some publications insist on it – but yours truly often has to spend a bit of time digging these out.

Note that these references appertain to our print edition, which some may regard as a throwback, but which I hold is an endearing tradition; it evokes memories of readers keeping their copies of The Herald for a week or more, and sifting though back copies on the kitchen table to refresh their memories about the story concerned – though I don’t suppose that happens very much these days.

What do we do, though, when we have letters about topics that have not appeared in print? These days The Herald publishes much more online than it can accommodate in a 24-page broadsheet. On Tuesday, for example, a reader wrote about Lord Brodie’s Scottish Hospitals Inquiry being mothballed until the autumn. Our report on this was carried online, but did not make the final cut for the paper. In instances like this, we will now be appending the online heading – in this case (“Delay announced to Scottish Hospitals Inquiry hearings”, heraldscotland, July 1) – this being the date it was first uploaded.

The print headlines will remain the first option, though. Especially for those who keep their back copies.