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Every week, The Post runs a collection of letters of readers’ grievances — pointing out grammatical mistakes, missing coverage and inconsistencies. These letters tell us what we did wrong and, occasionally, offer praise. Here, we present this week’s Free for All letters.

As a lifelong newspaper devotee, I devour The Post every morning. As a Republican, I read articles about Democrats to discover what erroneous thinking they are trying to convince us is logical.

As a man in my 80th year, I even read KidsPost to try to understand the youngest generation. I worry when I find misinformation on the page devoted to children. To wit: At the very top of the Jan. 3 page, Chip reports that the cheese dream was the predecessor to the grilled cheese sandwich, and it used only one slice of bread. Everyone from my generation knows that a cheese dream consisted of a slice of bread, a slice of cheese, and two strips of bacon, all baked in the oven.

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Please advise Chip to more carefully research his material so he doesn’t mislead the most vulnerable readers on matters of historical import.

James Sherry, Winchester, Va.

Readers deserve more respect

I am dismayed at the elimination of The Washington Post Magazine, with its color photos and art, interviews, long-form reporting, Date Lab and puzzles. The crossword puzzle, now in the Arts & Style section, was printed in tiny, tiny print. I should not be expected to enlarge it on my printer, even if I knew how.

Please respect readers by giving both The Post and Los Angeles Times Sunday crosswords at least twice the real estate they were given on Jan. 1. Why not eliminate the horoscopes? Or make the half-page ad for the paper a quarter page? I’m sure editors could find the room.

Jeanne Alexander, Waynesboro, Va.

Readers critique The Post: Please keep Date Lab

Bring the market data back, please

I am very disappointed that the market data is no longer being published. On Jan. 1, I tried to find the market data for the week. However, all I saw were business news articles. The paper has discontinued several portions that were previously published. Discontinuing the market data, not just reducing its content but eliminating it, has disappointed me more than the other cost-cutting measures.

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Carol Fagnani, Annandale

Post-parting depression

Allan Sloan’s column was the only place in The Post where there was investment information that was usable and understandable for the low-level investor. I never missed reading it. His last column, “A final word: Be wary of crypto and anything to do with Elon Musk” [Business, Jan. 1], with its discussion of “craptocurrency,” was an example of how his writing called a spade a spade and was helpful to the little guy who can’t afford to chase the latest craze. I wish The Post would renew his contract.

Virginia Nuta, Montgomery Village

I have been following with much disappointment the gradual shrinking of the Sunday Washington Post. It is a sad drama and reminds me of a movie, “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” except this is more of a tragedy than a comedy.

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Every week it seems another section of the Sunday Post is disappearing, first Outlook, then The Washington Post Magazine and now both the stock listings and Allan Sloan’s column. (I am not sure what will be left of the already meager business section.) I am especially dismayed that the Date Lab feature has disappeared with the magazine. I always started my Sunday morning with the trials and tribulations of the latest Date Lab couple. I guess I will have to head straight for the comics before facing the reality of the latest world and political news.

We should all recognize this is another example of shrinkflation (less product for the same price) that The Post has recently been writing about. I am hoping that, just like Lily Tomlin in her role as the shrinking woman, the Sunday Post will grow back to its normal size before the newspaper and its subscribers completely disappear.

Alex Amdur, Bethesda

2022 cartoons needed some balance

The Dec. 30 edition featured two retrospectives for 2022. They were noteworthy for their stark contrast. On the Friday Opinion page, Michael de Adder identified 15 of his favorite cartoons covering “the year’s biggest stories.” None of the cartoons depicted the current president of the United States. Nor did Vice President Harris appear in any of these cartoons. The fentanyl crisis, immigration and a 40-year high inflation rate didn’t qualify as among the biggest cartoon-worthy stories of 2022. Something involving Tucker Carlson’s pants did, however.

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Turning to the op-ed page, columnist Marc A. Thiessen expounded on “The 10 worst things Joe Biden did in 2022,” concluding with the observation that “Biden’s second year was even more divisive and incompetent than his first.”

One doesn’t have to adopt Thiessen’s political perspective in its entirety to expect that the most significant editorial cartoons of The Post might have included at least some illustration(s) — good-natured or otherwise — of the missteps of the administration over the course of the year. The great Herblock was an equal opportunity cartoonist, skewering leaders and other notable figures of authority on the right and left, irrespective of their political affiliation. I would enjoy a similar, more balanced diet in the editorial cartoons featured in the paper, as The Post at least attempts to achieve in its other sections.

James Holt, Washington

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Many, many thanks for the Dec. 30 reminder of how talented and always on point cartoonist Michael de Adder is! The cartoons of Tucker Carlson and Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett M. Kavanaugh were priceless; the Herschel Walker one was on the money, and the tribute cartoon to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was classy and to the point, as she always was and always will be. What a talented artist de Adder is.

Peggy M. Spates, Hyattsville

Local newspapers are important

I am glad the Dec. 31 Style article “A local paper uncovered the Santos scandal” pointed out the importance of local newspapers and the very serious problem of their rapid disappearance. Ironically, The Post contributed to this problem by closing the Gazette newspapers several years ago, leaving millions of D.C.-area residents without news of what is happening in our neighborhoods and local governments. Why did those who made that decision do such a horrible disservice to the public? As The Post itself states every day, democracy dies in darkness. Please bring back our local news source.

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David Fallick, Rockville

Wanted: Dates and details

I’m a longtime subscriber to The Post and an amateur historian who always looks forward to Retropolis. However, the Jan. 2 article, “A Republican president sided with a mob over rule of law — in the 1880s,” while fascinating, exemplified a growing and deplorable trend I see elsewhere in The Post: It lacked sufficient date references. Were it not for the phrase “But the same phenomenon took place in the 1880s” and a closing reference to President Chester A. Arthur, a reader would have no idea when these lurid events took place.

Similarly, many Post profiles — both of politicians and celebrities — omit any mention of the age of their subjects, though they sometimes give the ages of other people. I used to assume that copy editors were so overstretched that they couldn’t fix all such issues, but now I’m starting to wonder whether management has decided its readers don’t need pesky details such as dates at all. Please prove me wrong.

Steven Alan Honley, Washington

Wonderful stories from a hateful man

Michael Dirda and The Post owe the Jewish community a huge apology for the review about a new biography of Roald Dahl.

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In “Roald Dahl: Complicated, troubling — and beloved,” the Jan. 1 Book World review of Matthew Dennison’s “Teller of the Unexpected,” Dahl was lauded by the reviewer. Dirda called Dahl a “troubling, complicated figure. Waspishly opinionated, frequently offensive, a hard bargainer with publishers and swaggeringly obnoxious with his editors, he could also be irresistibly charming, outrageously funny and, in his younger days, a relentless Casanova.”

Dirda also utterly minimized Dahl’s notorious antisemitism as “Not least, while Dahl defended his notorious 'anti-Israeli’ political views as justifiable anger over that nation’s treatment of the Palestinian people, many felt this argument was a cover for antisemitism.”

In 2021, Jewish people had to deal with a historic increase in antisemitic acts. In 2022, that trend seemingly continued, and as we entered 2023 we’ve seen multiple instances of anti-Jewish graffiti in the D.C. region — how on earth could The Post publish a review that completely whitewashes Roald Dahl?

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Ignoring how hateful Dahl could be can be defended only through willful ignorance, especially by a writer for The Post, as previous articles included evidence to his hatefulness such as: “In 1983, Dahl told the New Statesman, ‘There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.’ ”

Dahl’s defenders will claim that’s entirely unfair. The man was a genius, after all, one of the greatest children’s writers of the 20th century.

So‚ no, Roald Dahl can’t be both “complicated and beloved.” You can love his work, sure. The stories are wonderful. But we should be able to say the books are great without saying this hateful man should be “beloved.”

Ketzirah Lesser, Washington

Regarding the Jan. 2 obituary for Jacob Luitjens, “Last Nazi collaborator imprisoned in the Netherlands for wartime crimes”:

How unfortunate that the only picture readers got to see of a self-proclaimed “monster” was of him smiling.

As reported in the obituary, among Luitjens’ final comments, in a conversation with an Ottawa Citizen reporter, were that he hoped that “a monster can also become a normal person again.” He admitted to assisting the Nazis find, arrest and ultimately kill Jews and resistance fighters during World War II. Readers were left with a photo of a smiling Luitjens, seemingly comfortable on his sofa. How “normal” he looks, thanks to The Post’s chosen family photo. Six million Jews know otherwise.

Keith M. Dubetsky, Bristow

Using a term incorrectly has an impact

The Jan. 4 front-page article on the rise of antisemitism in the United States, “Family wakes up to signs of hate in own front yard,” caught my attention because I am Jewish and an active member of Temple Rodef Shalom (past president), which is seeking the best ways to engage the community on such issues.

It happens, too, that I am a man with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, which is a form of dementia. The reference in the article to scattering the “demented handicrafts” shocked me. The swastikas in the yard were not “demented,” nor would it be proper to refer to those who put them there as “demented.” They are evil and dangerous.

The misuse of this term adds to the terrible narrative around people who are diagnosed with dementia. Though my preference would be to eliminate the word “dementia” from the medical dictionary, I would also hope newspaper reporters with front-page access and their editors could refrain from the use of the term in such an inappropriate way.

Samuel A. Simon, McLean

Sullying the reputation of unions

What purpose could possibly be served by the identification of a suspect in a Kansas City, Mo., kidnapping case as a “railroad union worker” [“Black leaders’ warnings of a killer went unheeded,” front page, Jan. 3]? The phrase was used not once but twice, lest the first reference had slipped by readers.

The suspect’s union representation plays no role whatsoever in the case, but it did offer an opening to seemingly take a shot at a movement millions of Americans belong to in the hope of improving their lives and those of their families.

David Prosten, Falmouth, Mass.

Some better examples of great books that became movies

The Jan. 5 Style article “A challenging jump to screen” raised the interesting issue of whether great books can be successfully translated to the screen, but it could have used better examples of film adaptations.

The list it quoted of successful adaptations included “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which was an original screenplay, not an adaptation. The book by Arthur C. Clarke was a novelization of his screenplay. Most of the other examples, such as “Psycho,” involved good genre fiction, not literary fiction.

There are better examples to be found in the works of two of the most successful Hollywood directors, John Ford and Steven Spielberg. Ford successfully adapted “Grapes of Wrath,” “How Green Was My Valley,” “The Informer” and other novels. Spielberg’s successful adaptations include “The Color Purple,” “Schindler’s List” and “Empire of the Sun.”

One well-known story of a film adaptation involves “To Have and Have Not,” which reportedly originated when director Howard Hawks told Ernest Hemingway he could make a good movie out of Hemingway’s worst book. He succeeded — with the help of screenwriter William Faulkner.

Jeffrey Gorsky, Arlington

Perhaps a Tudorial for the critic

Regarding Philip Kennicott’s Jan. 1 Critic’s Notebook, “Learning an old lesson from the Tudors: Grifters gonna grift”:

Readers expect to learn about art through art criticism. Criticism of Tudor art must show at least a rudimentary understanding of Tudor iconography, literary and biblical allusions, Reformation controversies, and the patrons, materials and stylistic features of the art itself. Kennicott’s article supplants criticism with grossly reductive associations, wobbly knee-jerk reactions and ugly cheap shots at the art itself. (To paraphrase in a nutshell: Tudor art reminds him of some trashy snapshots and digital images of today’s unsavory political figures, and so is bad.) The point appeared to be to dissuade readers from viewing the Tudor exhibition because it shows only “power’s dishonesty.” As an art critic, he did no favors for art. He also did no favors for the excellent work of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s curators.

James Cotton, High Point, N.C.

Here’s the naked truth about assessing art

Regarding Sebastian Smee’s Jan. 1 Critic’s Notebook column, “Up close with Modigliani and the sexiest nudes in modern art” [Arts & Style]:

Imagine for one moment, please, a man reading The Post and coming across a double-page spread of paintings of nude men, whose bodies were intimately interpreted by a prominent female artist of the previous century (if only) and accompanied by the (near drooling) commentary of a female art historian who hints at the unseen pornographic studies.

Where to begin?

There is a corollary here with the 150-year history of attempting to pry monumental works of (heroic male) Confederate iconography and adulation from public parks, museums and public spaces. The objects have been so successfully and universally embedded in the social consciousness that the effort to say, “Stop! Look at what statement is being made here,” involves so much more than an objective review of the past.

This is not the first time that Smee has skirted the boundaries of these topics and been given a great deal of leeway and ink by Post editors to do so.

Please, stop. Think about what is really being stated and implied here.

Mary H. Kiraly, Bethesda

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