Dear Gareth,

In response to Stuart Reid's letter in 18N&Q No. 2, I agree that we should aim at high standards, but things must be considered.

A magazine can aim at capturing all the readers who share a narrow interest or some readers who have a broad common interest. These different approaches can be seen with MILITARY ILLUSTRATED and MILITARY MODELLING respectively. ECWN&Q has a narrow academic sphere of interest and this restricts its sales, but given the large local history, re-enactment and wargaming interest in the period, it pays its way.

Even Partizan Press has to break even on its publications if it is to survive - this means selling copies - which means responding to what the readers want. If you ignore wargamers you reduce sales and this magazine will suffer and may die as others have.

ECWN&Q has in the past tried to encourage young and inexperienced writers and researchers to contribute. There is a feeling that many are put off by the fear that a host of ghoulish 'experts' are just waiting for them to make a mistake so that a withering correction can be issued. Sadly many keep their discoveries to themselves because they don't have the confidence to submit their work.

No article that gets written is ever completely finished. In historical research nothing is an absolute certainty and we must all accept that we will make mistakes. The role of a publication like 18N&Q (and ECWN&Q) is to exchange information between people sharing a common interest. If we don't encourage new writers to contribute we are only doing ourselves out of the information they might send in.

So carry on writing, witless boobics, you might know something that us clever people don'd

John Tincey, Hounslow, Middlesex

P-S. I think 18CMN&Q and 18CN&Q are too difficult to type. I propose 18N&Q as the official abbreviation.

Not enough status. The longer the acronym, the larger the status. How about ECMN&Q?