Sloppy English
Sir: 1 am reluctant to raise again the subject of sloppy English, about which you were good enough to print a letter of mine (February 10). However, it is only fair to your readers that I should be permitted to point out an error which appears in the version of that letter in your columns.
The logic of the first sentence of my letter requires that the conjunction appearing after " misuse of ' flaunt ' for ' flout ' " (Letters, February 3) should of course be 'but,' not ' for,' since I was at that point making a contrast between your correspondent's edifying linguistic preaching and her less than perfect practice, and the punctuation mark immediately before it must be a comma, not a full stop.
In other circumstances, this would be a trivial matter, but considering the subject of the correspondence it seems at least prudent that I should point out to your watchful readers that the mistake is yours, sir, not mine.
W. P. Longland Flat 1, 38 Nightingale Lane, London SW12
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