SIR – I feel sure that there is more significance in the remarkably protracted deafening silence between your publication of my response to Maynard Crabtree’s garbled grammar, and the ensuing, (albeit belated), effusion from Malcolm Laws (Letters, April 27), than is revealed in its turgid, convoluted and, (dare one say ?) inscrutable contents.

Let me say at once, however, that irresistibly comic as the mental image of Mr Laws with his midnight candle flickering at one elbow, “The Eleven Plus Student’s Guide To Good Grammar”, at the other, and my offending missive clenched grimly between his gnashers may be, I welcome his contribution.

First, let me say that Mr Laws reveals enough of himself in those few short paragraphs for me to be completely confident that while my original comments were admittedly tongue in cheek – even mischievous – he will be well aware they carried no deliberate malice.

Can anything better illustrate what has become of society than that it needs to invent contemptuous and derogatory names for the ever-dwindling minority which still cares for excellence? You know, Mr Laws, nerds and geeks!

Bryan Owram, Main Street, Esholt