Louise Holden has some tips on editing a letters page, in our SchoolMag guide

Look at the letters page in today's paper. What you've turned to is one of the most important features of a healthy publication. It serves a function that no other page in the newspaper can: it gives a voice to readers, allowing them to respond to events unfolding in their communities and the world, and to take on writers they disagree with.

In the wake of the Ferns report last month, many readers turned straight to the letters page to read the responses of fellow readers rather than the necessarily distanced accounts of journalists.

Not every student will get the chance to write for their school magazine, but you can encourage wider participation in the project with a competently edited letters page. You might decide to make it funny, keep it news-driven, make it an agony-aunt page - or go for a bit of everything. Put up notices around school, inviting letters or e-mails. Make it clear that anonymous letters will not be printed, otherwise you may get a lot of libellous material.

Liam McAuley, who is letters editor of The Irish Times, has some tips for editing a letters page.

If you plan to write to your school magazine, here are a few ways to stand a better chance of getting your letter published.

Sometimes a letters editor needs a very short letter to fill space, so see how frugal you can be. The shortest letter ever received by The Irish Times was written by Gabriel Rosenstock about Bill Clinton's hasty bombing of Libya after the Monica Lewinsky affair. It read: "Zip. Zap."