Sir, Philip Howard’s snobbish and Luddite reaction to the launch of wordia.com (“Online dictionary to chronicle the People’s English”, Sept 19) is typical of those wordsmiths who claim that the English language should be controlled by a small number of experts. Sadly for Philip, English is a wonderful evolving thing that belongs to all of us. It has a habit of constantly changing and it’s time that the way people research words changed too.

Wordia.com will have great success in reaching young people who would never dream of picking up a dry and dusty paper dictionary. This younger generation would also be astonished to discover that the “rules” concerning English words are set by a tiny group of academics and are updated just once a year. For the always “switched-on” younger multimedia generation the approach of Philip and his haughty band of academics is outmoded and irrelevant. A new approach must be taken to get this generation interested in learning and using a wider variety of words.

Michael Birch

Wordia adviser and investor

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