FOR some, the number will be mind-numbingly large.

For others, it will be alarmingly low. Either way, I should inform you that as of today, there are 117 days to go until the 2015 General Election.

It promises to be a lively debate, even if Alex Salmond has proclaimed that the campaign will not be about trying to win a second independence referendum, insisting that it will be focused on the concept and actuality of home rule.

As Letters Editor, I suppose I should in some way be rueful. After all, the independence debate was one of the great events in the life of this newspaper, and The Herald's community of readers embraced it with unforgettable zeal and passion, penning thousands of letters on a myriad strands of the debate. Our Letters Pages provided the most authoritative, informed, balanced - and entertaining - comment in Scotland, and I hope I can be forgiven for metaphorically doffing my cap to you all as we embark on a new calendar year.

If the last few weeks were a phoney war before the real heat of battle is rejoined, no-one has been fooled. The deliberations of the Smith Commission have been fully aired in our pages, and the bones of its findings picked clean.

The comments and actions of Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy and possible coalition scenarios involving the SNP have also featured prominently in our mailbag, as have those perennial favourites renewable energy, religious education, and local taxation. Honourable mentions also go to the New Year gongs and the quality, or lack thereof, of Hogmanay television.

Many of these letters have been penned by correspondents, who, as I have previously mentioned in this slot, first became engaged during the referendum debate. In November, for the benefit of our new recruits, I ran through some of our rules and conventions, such as why we require full addresses, the limits we place on invective, and the desirability of brevity. One topic I omitted to touch on, however, was the vexed subject of exclusivity.

I have recently been in correspondence with one of our contributors, who asked what our policy was on letters sent to a variety of publications.

Like every other newspaper, we prefer our content to be exclusive. We cannot, of course - and would not - tell readers not to write to other journals, even those with smaller circulations and fewer online readers, if they see fit.

What I will say, though, is that I will not publish a letter if I know it to have been previously published elsewhere, and will try to give priority to a letter I know to be only for The Herald. As in everything, there will be exceptions - for example on matters of clarification or correction, such as from government, public bodies, Police Scotland and the like, where we would be doing our readers a disservice by omitting them.

We like to think of these pages as a forum for a conversation among our readers. We will try to ensure you read the most pertinent, sometimes impertinent, comments here first.

That said, May 7 looms ever closer. I am sure you will relish the debate.