There is absolutely – and I do mean absolutely – nothing amiss with “almost unique”, any more than there is with “barely alive”, “nearly dry”, “partly completed” and other stopping-off points on the way towards the absolute (Letters, 3 March). What you can’t have is “more unique”, “least incomparable” and other such comparatives and superlatives, or indeed “very fatal”. As long ago as 1997, Kingsley Amis scorned “those long-dead pedants who once campaigned against ‘almost invariably’ on similar grounds” (The King’s English). This, I should have thought, is fairly obvious.
W Stephen Gilbert
Corsham, Wiltshire
• I don’t share Alastair Stewart’s hostility to tautology (King for a day, 28 February), but your correspondent Michael Carlson is surely wrong to accuse Stewart of tautology in writing “I think”. Surely “I think”, and similar expressions, such as “in my opinion”, do add something important to one’s meaning: they express a degree of uncertainty, or acknowledge that other people might reasonably take a different view. I myself would not say, “I think the world is round”, but I would say, “I think we should stay in the EU”. Indeed, far from abandoning such expressions, we would do well to use them much more often. That’s what I think anyway.
Donald Mackinnon
Newport, Gwent
• I think that John Brooke is only half right. “A regal injunction upon any subject referring to their fellow citizens as…” needs not just an s, but an apostrophe after the s ie “subjects’”, as the gerund “referring” belongs to the subjects in question. It is a feature of modern English that most people would now say “I have commented on him making a mistake”, rather than the genitive “I have commented upon his making a mistake”, which is certainly more logical.
Nick Wray
Derby
• Unless in America, the correct term is Mothering Sunday (Letters, 3 March), and it’s such a shame the UK greeting card industry and retailers more generally choose to Americanise this. My mum insists on the British terminology.
Rosemary Banner
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
