What's wrong with this? “The last surviving member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience was found dead in an hotel room in Portland, Oregon, while on a US tour. Mitch Mitchell, 61... appeared to have died from natural causes. Hendrix's stepsister, Janie, said, ‘His role in shaping the sound of the Jimi Hendrix Experience cannot be underestimated'. ” (News in brief, November 14.)

Michael Youngman, from North Yorkshire, among many other readers, knows. Here are a couple more clues, depressingly from successive days earlier this month: “Obama's wife, Michelle, has of course been crucial; but the role of the couple's two girls, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, cannot be underestimated.” “The attraction of playing against Atlético, the club where [Torres] became captain and talisman before his teens were out, cannot be underestimated.”

Beginning to get the idea? Out of curiosity, I entered “impossible to underestimate” (thinking that perhaps the more common construction) into The Times database search engine, and immediately produced 12 results from the past couple of years.

When I trawled through them, guess how many should actually have read “impossible to overestimate”? Eleven. The twelfth came from an item in this very column on March 4, 2006, in which I apologised for The Times getting it wrong again, again. I concluded (rather wittily, I thought): “It is impossible to overestimate our chagrin at this recurring solecism, or indeed to underestimate the chances of our getting it consistently correct in the future.”

Still, it's not always a pleasure to be proved right, and I'm at a loss to know why we so often get it wrong. Rather wish I'd kept my big mouth shut.

Stop it, now

A signal from Andrew Welch, Captain, RN Retd: “Whilst I am no longer surprised that the average hack on The Times has forgotten, or never knew, that ships are she, I was surprised to see that QE2's farewell editorial had neutered the poor old girl. Please could you try to (re)educate your staff.” The Times Style Guide certainly prefers ships to be she, but stops short of making it a three-line whip. Rendering ships feminine is not, of course, a question of grammatical correctitude but merely of convention and tradition, and it's a convention that's probably on the wane, sad to say.

Foggy due

Allison Walker-Morecroft writes from Norwich: “Readers are usually aware of errors in The Times, but I have waited in vain for two solecisms to be drawn to their attention, of which every single writer appears to be guilty. First, ‘He did not approve of me going to London.' No, no, no. This should read: ‘He did not approve of my going to London.' ‘Going' is a verbal noun, a gerund.

“Secondly, ‘Traffic is heavy on the M1, due to an accident.' ‘Due' is used for pleasant occurrences, as in ‘to give her her dues'. Unpleasant occurrences are expressed by ‘owing', as in ‘owing to circumstances beyond our control', etc.”

These are not, in fact, solecisms. First, on the choice of a possessive or non-possessive pronoun with a gerund, Fowler acknowledges that in the 20th century usage became evenly divided. He cites among many others the following two examples: “Fancy his minding that you went to the Summer Exhibition” (A.N. Wilson, 1978), and “You're talking rather loudly, if you don't mind me saying so” (P. Lively, 1987). Fowler feels that the possessive form is in fact in retreat, except when the personal pronoun comes first, eg, “My being here must embarrass you” (New Yorker, 1986).

I have never heard Ms Walker-Morecroft's interpretation of “due to”, and can find no support for it in any of the reference books. There is some argument for a distinction between “due to” and “owing to”, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the pleasantness or otherwise of the occurrence, but rather with a view in some quarters that the phrase “due to” must be attached to a noun or pronoun: ie, “His absence was due to illness” is correct; “He was absent due to illness” is wrong, and should be “owing to illness”.

The Times Style Guide adheres to this view, although Fowler opines that this hostility is a 20th-century phenomenon and is disappearing.

Don't be vague

A reference to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig “bartering” his offered viscountcy up to an earldom after the 1918 armistice (November 11) brought forth protests, not least from Michael Sullivan, of Ealing: “The misuse of the word ‘barter' to mean ‘bargain, negotiate or haggle' is now widespread. ‘Barter' means to exchange goods or services for other goods or services without the use of money. There was a time when every schoolchild knew that.”

Guy Palmer points out a growing misuse of “reticent” to mean “reluctant”, most recently on November 11: “ ... the reticence of authorities and developers to invest”.

The times2 quiz (November 14) relocated Baku from the Caspian to the Black Sea.

Finally, last Saturday's Magazine inexplicably reprinted the previous week's Weekend Tips gardening page in its entirety. The Magazine editor assures me that it was all right when it left us, honest; the new printing presses apparently have a mind of their own.

Apologies for all of the above.

Times Recommends

• Fragility always gets my sympathy vote
• Double it and you get the real jobless total
• Has al-Megrahi paid his council tax?