SIR – I read with amusement the contribution from your erudite correspondent Bryan Owram (Letters, April 13).

In it, he agrees with the sentiments expressed in an earlier letter by Maynard Crabtree (April 7), but then goes on to bring our attention to Mr Crabtree’s syntactical errors.

I too read Mr Crabtree’s letter and, although there were errors, his meaning was perfectly clear. Mr Owram, however, in his condemnation of Mr Crabtree, failed to notice his own error with regard to verb/subject agreement with a parenthetical clause.

I quote “….the noun ‘newsreader’ (and for that matter, the noun ‘BBC’) is singular and, as any reasonably intelligent 12-year-old knows, demand a singular verb.”

In this sentence, the subject ‘noun’ requires the third-person-singular verb inflection ‘demands’, and is not affected by the parenthetical clause.

It is easy, if rather ungracious, to nit-pick at the spelling and grammar of others, especially in a newspaper letters page, and to suggest that it is a matter of intelligence is quite rude. Not everyone has had the privilege of being able to study English at such depth, and with time constraints it is all too easy to make mistakes.

Malcolm Laws, Cemetery Road, Low Moor