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This page last updated 28 March 2011
Anglicans Online last updated 20 August 2000

Letters to AO

EVERY WEEK WE PUBLISH a selection of letters we receive in response to something you've read at Anglicans Online. Stop by and have a look at what other AO readers are thinking.

Alas, we cannot publish every letter we receive. And we won't publish letters that are anonymous, hateful, illiterate, or otherwise in our judgment do not benefit the readers of Anglicans Online. We usually do not publish letters written in response to other letters. We edit letters to conform with standard AO house style for punctuation, but we do not change, for example, American spelling to conform to Canadian orthography. On occasion we'll gently edit letters that are too verbose in their original form. Email addresses are included when the authors give permission to do so.

If you'd like to respond to a letter whose author does not list an email, you can send your response to Anglicans Online and we'll forward it to the writer.

Letters from 21 to 27 March 2011

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters express the opinions of the writers and not Anglicans Online. We publish letters that we think will be of interest to our readers, whether we agree with them or not. If you'd like to write a letter of your own, click here.

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Letter to the editor

I refer to your leader of March 6th, concerning forefathers, foremothers (or the lack thereof), and other ancestral figures.

Something struck me in particular: the writer seemed obsessed with the use of the first person plural even when it made for incongruous reading: ("Like many people, we have one father, two grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight great-great-grandfathers, and so on. We are very lucky to know who all eight of our great-great-grandfathers were, and to know something about their lives. We know, for example, that they were born:..."), and so forth.

Is this the use of the royal first plural, identity disorder, or something we should know about?

Obi Udeariry
St. Andrew's Anglican Church, Aladinma, Owerri, Nigeria
Owerri, NIGERIA
netwalker55@yahoo.es
24 March 2011

(Editor: It's what is called the 'Editorial "we"'. It is a linguistic device designed to help a writer appear to be representing his publication and not just himself. We realize (OK, I realize) that in the case of ancestry, it's pretty silly unless all of the editorial staff are brothers and sisters, but we try hard at Anglicans Online to speak with a united voice and not speak as individuals.)

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Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.

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