Madam, - As the accepted paper of record, The Irish Times has always been well edited for correctness of grammar and terminology.
I was disappointed and annoyed, therefore, with front-page report in Tuesday's edition headlined "Motorists diqualified in North to be banned in Republic".
This talked throughout about the North versus "the South". Having been born in the south, raised in the west, living in the east and working frequently in the north, I find it enough to inform overseas colleagues that there is no such country as Southern Ireland, and no such jurisdiction as "the South", without finding such careless terminology on the front page of my daily paper.
Moreover, I find on page 6 that a mobile phone, rather than its owner, was "robbed", and on page 7 an infinitive-splitting headline: "New register to only list future mobile phones". The report itself goes on to tell us that the register is likely "to only apply" to new phones.
It's just not what we expect from The Irish Times: there are frontiers beyond which you should not boldly go! - Yours, etc,
DARA BEGGAN,
Arran Quay,
Dublin 7.
Madam, - It was refreshing to read Belinda McKeon's amply questioning interview with the American poet Billy Collins (Arts, July 24th). And he is right to suggest that the word "accessible" has almost become a literary four-letter word - so long as we guard against considering obviously "difficult" any poem which makes us work.
There is a fine line, but a line nonethless, between a poem which can be easily understood and appreciated and one which is little more than doggerel; the fine line, one might say, is the poet's practice of his art. A pedant might equally add that the line is the distance between Tennyson and Pound!
Weary from driving across an England half-sunken under an apocalyptic deluge, I was delighted to read an intelligent and uplifting article whose depth and professionalism - yes, why not? - made me, as all such pieces should, consider reading anew the writer at its centre. Well done. - Yours, etc,
FRED JOHNSTON,
Carn Ard,
Circular Road,
Galway.