So pleased that for last week’s piece Catherine Bennett (Modern tribes, Weekend, 28 February) didn’t have to look too far for inspiration for her grammar pedant. (“It’s almost as bad as saying historic for historical. I wrote to the Times about it: anyone capable of that kind of outrage ought to be gagged, imprisoned and banned from writing, as well as summarily dismissed.”) Alastair Stewart’s piece in the main Saturday paper (King for a day: I’d ban linguistic Turner tinsel, 28 February) provided a great model. (“Cells would be built at my Tower of London for those who feel the need to introduce degrees of ‘uniqueness’. One’s head is unique. If I hear of anyone suggesting something is “almost unique”, they will lose theirs.”)
Both were a hoot, though I found it hard to tell which one was made up.
Jamie Blomfield
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
• I’d love to serve at the court of Alastair Stewart. But I would take the opportunity to whisper in his majesty’s ear about the ugliness, however effective, of expressions such as “A regal injunction upon any subject referring to their fellow citizens as...”. An ugliness that in most cases can be removed by a little rewording, and in this case simply by the addition of an “s” to “subject”.
Burchfield in Fowler’s Modern English Usage says: “It begins to look as if the use of an indefinite third person is now passing unnoticed by standard speakers (except those trained in traditional grammar).” Yet if we are to protect (until King Alastair’s much-to-be-hoped-for accession) what remains of the Queen’s English, then it is precisely that training, leavened with common sense, which will best equip us for the task.
John Brooke
Bewdley, Worcestershire
• Alastair Stewart opines that we subjects are making a right royal mess of his language by subjecting it to the vagaries of redundant verbiage. Well, your maj, it may come as a surprise to the royal we to learn that you are pissing into the wind of change that has filled the sails of this seafaring language for over a thousand years. This rough speech is the common wealth of the people, not the preserve of the crown, no matter how pure. And tinsel would no more trivialise the glories of Turner than would random mutation threaten evolution.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
• So Alastair Stewart wants to “purge tautology and other redundant verbiage”. Perhaps he could start with his own column, which ends “…on this broad theme George Orwell was, I think, spot on”. Since Stewart is writing the column, “I think” in this instance is self-evident and hence redundant. Physician, heal thyself.
Michael Carlson
Haslemere, Surrey
• Having used all of his fifth paragraph to expose the laziness of the use of helicopter as a verb, Alastair Stewart then uses most of paragraph six to do the same for motorcade. Not just tautological, “sloppy and verbose”, but dead boring!
Carolyn Kirton
Aberdeen
• Alastair Stewart has a hit list for misuse of English. I’d include the use of “brutalism” for “brutality”, unless by “linguistic brutalism” he did mean language that looks like concrete buildings.
Rev Canon Cllr Steve Parish
Warrington, Cheshire
• No such word as “trove” (Corrections and clarifications, 2 March)? Alright, then.
W Paul Wilkinson
Atherstone, Warwickshire
