Design changes get black marks

Re the redesigned Current section:

Self-indulgent redesigners of the section have produced some real page-turners. The term refers to pages a reader turns rather than labor to decipher those anorexic, painfully skinny columns set in microscopic type.

Their purpose is unclear: Is it to punish the writers, whose words are destined to be unread, or is it to punish potential readers, driving them on to less tortured presentations?

If the words are unimportant, why not spare us the visual trickery? Please.

Walter Houk

Woodland Hills

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Did your layout artist get a dry-erase marker for his birthday? Please get rid of those bold black lines on the Op-Ed pages! They are distracting, unattractive and unnecessary.

Readers don’t need a visual screech owl to tell them where one essay begins and another ends.

Joe McKenna

Irvine

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Re space for letters to the editor:

In the 1950s and ‘60s, General Motors would quietly cheer when it lost a point or two in market share. GM didn’t want to be broken up by the feds.

Are y’all going down the same path? First, The Times reduces Sports letters from three columns to two. Now you do the same thing on your editorial page.

Watering down the product is no way for the dominant paper to stay dominant. Just look at where GM is today.

Bob Munson

Newbury Park