It seems we can’t take our drink — or perhaps we’ve taken too much. Our columnist Janice Turner recently described Babycham as 6 per cent proof, Special Brew as 9 per cent proof and a “nice Chilean chardonnay” as 11.5 per cent proof.

“All wrong,” said Cluny MacPherson, among others. “In these three instances, what was being quoted was percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV), not ‘proof’. The outmoded — at least in the UK — term ‘proof’ relates only to measurement of the alcoholic strength of distilled alcohol. The UK scale runs from 0 to 175 with 100 degrees (never per cent) being the point at which a distilled spirit mixed with gunpowder will sustain the combustion of the latter. The American scale runs from 0 to 200 with the ‘proof’ strength being exactly twice the alcohol by volume figure. As all alcoholic beverages on sale in the UK have strength designated as alcohol by volume, can you please follow suit and consign ‘proof’ to the dustbin of history?”

And then we did it again: “Does The Times Style Guide not give advice on how to denote the strength of alcoholic drinks?” asks Richard Need. “The latest example was Ben Macintyre (October 16), who told us unhelpfully that navy rum used to be ‘94.5 per cent proof’. Did he mean that it was 94.5 per cent alcohol, which is very unlikely, or that it was 94.5 degrees proof, which would mean 54 per cent alcohol in the UK and 47.25 per cent in the US?”

I didn’t know about gunpowder; no wonder they call it firewater. Anyway, our apologies, and the chief revise editor has already put an entry in the Style Guide. Chin-chin.

Stir crazy

Alex Hayesmore writes: “Please stop using the word ‘jail’ in your articles [Richard Morrison, Times 2, Wednesday]. The United Kingdom English spelling is ‘gaol’. Difficult to read it may be, but it is the correct word. If you have any respect for our language over Americanisms you should use the correct spelling. When did the word ‘gaol’ drop out of English? If using the correct spelling is too controversial or difficult for your readership, use prison. My heart sinks every time I see that awful spelling which, whilst I was growing up, was only ever seen in old movies set in the 1800s American West.”

Times style stipulates jail, not gaol (except in historic references such as The Ballad of Reading Gaol), but this has nothing to do with American English. My dictionaries all agree that the origin is the Old French jaiole, meaning “cage”, and that the two spellings derive from the forms of the word that developed in two different areas of France. So it’s hard to see how one option can claim to be any better English than the other.

Poor substitute

Spot the errors, as Ian Forsyth and James Fells respectively did.

“If you substitute a can of standard cola for a diet version, you are saving around 140 calories” (times 2). “The powerful economic case . . . for substituting the present sticking-plaster system . . . with a preventive approach” (Opinion). If you substitute A for B, you put A in place of B, never vice versa. If in doubt, it is simpler, and safer, to do it the other way round and use “replace with (or by)” — thus, “If you replace a can of standard cola with a diet version, you are saving around 140 calories.”

Another recent article in times 2 made Dr Jeremy Sternberg wince: “While the English language is constantly evolving, I do expect The Times to resist the incursion of the most inelegant neologisms. You used the term ‘mentee’ (October 13) to describe a person in receipt of the services of a mentor. Mentor, teacher and guardian to Telemachus, gave his name to a role and not an action. The student of a mentor may be described as a protégé, or maybe simply a client, but please not a mentee, which is guaranteed to drive me mental.” At least we had the good grace to put it in inverted commas the first time.

You dissing me?

A fine response to last week’s words (mainly adjectives) that appear to have no meaning unless prefixed.

David Malaperiman writes: “Contrary to the assertions of your correspondent, ‘couth’ was an adjective much in use in the 1960s, certainly by young Fleet Air Arm aviators. References to couth birds (aka girls in pre-PC days), couth pubs and couth young officers, when applied to their standards of dress, were very much part of our everyday speech, if slightly tongue-in-cheek.”

Christopher Blake recalls P. G. Wodehouse’s line, “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled”, while Terry Chisman remembers his time as an apprentice at a laboratory when a researcher, comparing his experimental results with the theoretical predictions, announced that he was “very gruntled at the crepancy”. And Derick Betts says: “During National Service, some 61 years ago, I was ordered by a sergeant to dismantle a Bren gun and then to mantle it together again. I could not suppress my laughter and peeled a lot of potatoes as a result.” None of which proves a thing, but it’s all good fun.

Exit smiling

This obsession with words can produce irrational happiness at the sighting of a rarity. A wheelchair ramp at an apartment block near our office has a sign at the top reading “Egress”. It cheers me up every time I see it. I know; I really should get out (or, of course, egress) more.