Your Letters
15:07 UK time, Thursday, 20 August 2009
Describing an airport as "London Prestwick" (Wednesday letters) may sound totally ridiculous to us Brits, but don't forget we live on a small island, which gives us a different sense of scale to some other nations. I once met a Canadian who introduced himself as being from Toronto. He later admitted, "well, not actually from central Toronto, but about eight hours drive away". By those standards, Prestwick is indeed a London airport.
Adam, London, UK
Regarding the importance of punctuation (Wednesday letters), my Latin class was given this exercise to punctuate when learning the pluperfect (this was at a Scottish comprehensive in 2004):
Tom had had had Dick had had had had had had had had the teachers approval
With punctuation, the sense is revealed:
Tom had had "had", Dick had had "had had"; "had had" had had the teacher's approval.
EHLawrenson, London
that promised so much.
Sarah, London
Does it matter whether is a man or a woman? In these days of equality, surely men and women should run together?
Rob Falconer, Llandough, Wales
Re: Paper Monitor - what the right hand is doing?
Luke, Edinburgh
Another retronym: "hardcopy". It was called "the printed page" or something similar for centuries, but then we started distributing information as "softcopy".
Jessica, Enfield, UK
The 
