RECENT letters to The Herald have been a delight: we have had learned discourses on the Stewardship of the Schiltron Hundreds, and polemics for and against the formal teaching of English grammar. Unsurprisingly, the ''antis'' have crafted their letters with an eye to syntax and grammar which would have had old Fowler positively purring with pleasure, while some of the ''pros'' seemed to honour the rules more in the breach than the observance.
The general dumbing-down of academic and other standards has been widely deprecated, as ever, but on one subject there has been a curious silence - the dumbing-down of the Wee Stinker!
The Wee Stinker has been deodorised till it's not even mildly whiffy; whereas once the judges had to scour the rural fastnesses of Argyll or the Borders to find five winners (and who would have thought The Herald to have a large readership there?), now Glasgow postcodes feature prominently in the prize list. Stranger yet, the crossword has become so easy that even men get to win a T-shirt.
The compiler, not the crossword, is in bad odour. Fix it, soon.
William Haddow,
22 Keir Street, Glasgow.
May 26.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article