Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2020: Week 18
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a rare formal appeal for LoCs, this one via a form on the last page of Teo Torriatte, a Professionals slash zine
A Letter of Comment, or more commonly, a LoC or LOC, was originally a letter written by a fan and sent to a professional SF magazine or to a fanzine and published in a lettercol. Frequent contributors of LoCs were called letterhacks, and the act of writing the Loc was called letterhacking. The term LOC was in use as early as 1961. See Science Fiction Citations. In media fandom, where zines contained a lot of fanfiction, LOC became synonymous with feedback sent to the creator of a fanwork. A LoCer is one who writes the letter.
The term was carried over to the Internet, with LOCs transitioning to mean the feedback email that an author, zine publisher, or archivist received.