It being early November The Times has already published a feature on Christmas cards, which duly misused round robin to mean circular letter, which duly prompted a complaint, which I duly aired last week. I have since been enjoying an interesting exchange of views with Ann Keith, of Cambridge.

She wrote: “You employ a very odd logic. You say that although ‘round robin’ and ‘circular letter’ are commonly misused, The Times should not even try to use the terms correctly because this misuse is widespread. It is precisely because of this widespread misuse that your newspaper should maintain linguistic rigour and a high standard of written English.

“It is this cavalier attitude that results in, for example, singulars such as ‘less than’ and ‘amount of’ being used instead of the correct plurals ‘fewer than’ and ‘number of’. I am surprised that you show such disregard for correct terminology. If something is wrong, then no amount of common usage will make it right.”

Ms Keith and I must agree to differ on her assertion that if something is wrong, no amount of common usage will make it right. Language evolves. Common usage is one of the main drivers of that evolution. Do we still scrupulously use hysterics to mean just a disease of the female uterus? Or decimate to mean only the punitive reduction of a Roman legion by 10 per cent? Or apply gender only to grammar and never as a synonym for sex? Or use manuscript to mean only a handwritten document, never a typewritten one? Are we all careful never to use “warn” intransitively? Anyone who answered yes to all of the above is even more pedantic than I am*. All of these have been corrupted by common usage so that their misuse is now legitimised in various dictionaries.

If we restrict round robin to its “correct” but historical usage it will disappear from the language altogether; better, in my view, that it should survive in its broader, incorrect context, which will give us pedants the excuse to show off our knowledge by explaining its origins to anyone who’ll listen.

Seeing red

Jenny Roberts e-mailed: “I wonder if someone can have a word with your designers about the colours that they use in maps and other artwork. Recently there was a map showing journey times to Westminster, where adjoining areas were shown in red and green. My husband, who is red-green colour-blind, was frustrated in not being able to detect the difference in the two colours. There are many colour contrasts that colour-blind people can distinguish so it would be easy enough for designers to produce artwork that didn’t cause these problems.”

As ever I have passed this on to our heads of design and graphics, who do listen, even if they cannot accommodate every request.

Delayed reaction

Because of fears that the postal disruption is delaying entries, we are extending the deadline for nominations for the 2009 Times/ Sternberg Active Life Awards. These were proposed last year by Sir Sigmund Sternberg, the co-founder of the Three Faiths Forum, to be given to the person who has done most for society and good causes in old age. Times readers are invited to nominate someone over 70 who has defied the years “to assert the questing spirit of humanity”.

You now have until 5pm on Monday, November 16, and can post nominations to Times Newspapers Limited Public Relations Sternberg Award, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT, or e-mail sternberg.award@ thetimes.co.uk. More details at www.thetimes.co.uk/sternbergaward and don’t forget, there’s £5,000 for the winner and £1,000 each for five runners-up.

Bone of contention

Assorted bloomers from the past couple of weeks. We managed to amalgamate two perfectly good leg bones in a recent Weekend feature to create an entirely new one, the tibula. Last Saturday we referred to the diffusing of bombs instead of their defusing. And in a sports report we curiously described a tennis player’s wife who slapped an umpire after an on-court row as having “poured oil on the troubled waters”, when we clearly meant the opposite — added fuel to the flames, in fact.

Combative Coren

Regular readers will be familiar with Feedback’s fictional sister organisation, Offplease (the Office of You Can Please All of the People Some of the Time, Etc). Recent criticism of Giles Coren on this page prompted an excellent case study for Offplease.

I have picked two representatives from the postbag. On the one hand, Russell Thompson: “I’m not surprised that you receive plenty of complaints regarding Giles Coren. I never read his work nowadays because I find it tiresome due to the gratuitous provocations.” On the other, Selma Shrank: “I, and most of my friends who have a spark of life in them, think Giles Coren’s articles are the best. Quite often we start our Saturday conversations with ‘Did you read Giles Coren today?’ and more importantly we laugh and discuss them. Yes, he is provocative, but that’s what makes his articles so great. Roll on, Giles. You go — I go.” I do not make these up.

* My colleague Oliver Kamm, who pens The Pedant column in Times2 every Monday, would like it known that he answered yes to all of the above. Well, he would, wouldn’t he.