Right, get your scissors and glue out again. My reference a fortnight ago to a devoted grandmother compiling scrapbooks of Times cuttings for her youngsters excited many of you. Rupert Craven, of London, e-mails: “I can assure you that scrapbooks continue to thrive, even in the technology-centred metropolis. My brother and I have kept a commonplace book since the mid-1990s and are now up to Vol XI.

“Originally comprising manuscript notes and occasional newspaper cuttings, recipes, etc, it has now become almost entirely Times extracts, including obituaries and photographs. Recent additions have been Peter Brookes’s wonderful (but apparently controversial) cartoon of the PM à la Susan Boyle, and Mr Obama swatting that fly.”

Elisabeth Brooke writes from Middlesex: “I can’t compete with the reader who had cut out all the Archive pictures, but I do cut out all the landscapes, townscapes and seascapes. It’s a wonderful series.”

Philippa Seligman, of Cardiff, adds: “I was comforted and reassured that your Dorset readers are reading their Times with scissors at the ready just as I do. Since the paper looks more like a doily when I’ve finished with it, my husband and I have had to devise a system for who reads which bits first. With one son living in America and the other loving nature articles, I am constantly cutting out columns about birds and bits of British news which won’t make it on to American TV. I am known as the family cuttings service by the children and grandchildren, and it is good to know there are others similarly burdened.”

Cometh the hour

Our inability to differentiate between kilowatts and kilowatt-hours continues. Embarrassingly, the latest example was spotted by, among others, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Dr Richard Pike: “The solar energy system in Germany reported in your article (‘BP solar panel blaze raises concerns over alternative energy’, June 29) produces an average instantaneous power output of around 500 kilowatts (kW) when assessed throughout the entire year, which is typical of an area of 40,000 square metres of photo-voltaic cells installed in Northern Europe. Multiply this by the number of hours in a year (8,760), and the annual energy output approaches 4.5 million kilowatt-hours (kWh), not ‘kilowatts per year’ quoted in your article.

“Among the biggest concerns over alternative energy is the lack of understanding of the comparability of scientific units. Is it now time for inclusion in journalism courses, as a quid pro quo for scientists struggling to write exciting letters to newspapers?” It’s exciting enough for me, Dr Pike.

To dye for

Gloria Moleman says: “I was perturbed to notice that the staff of the Saturday Times are dying. Reading the June 20 Magazine I was brought up short to see Sarah Vine asking what was the benefit of dying your skin a lurid shade of orange. Later I read in Weekend that a friend of the writer in her early forties had started dying her hair. I looked up our three dictionaries to confirm that when changing the colour of something, one is not dying, but dyeing. I trust that your writers will soon be revived.”

Phil Jefferson spotted a bit of a pig’s ear in the same issue: “Playlist referred to ‘James Blandford, Marquis of Bath’ but on the following page to ‘the Marquess of Blandford’. I assume this is the same person, but Lord Bath is almost my next door neighbour and I always thought his surname was Thynne. And which is the preferred spelling in The Times? I always use Marquess as it looks more noble in print.” The style guide is clear: “marquess (not marquis, except in foreign contexts and occasional Scottish titles)”. The programme in question, Famous, Rich and Homeless, featured the Marquess of Blandford, nothing to do with Bath at all. Sorry.

Cracking on

“Three cheers for Mike Groushko of Hertfordshire (Feedback, June 20),” says Donal Kennedy. “The ‘crack’ was introduced to Hiberno-English in 1963, when Ronnie Drew of the Dubliners popularised Dominic Behan’s McAlpine’s Fusiliers, a ballad celebrating Irish building workers in Britain. No Irish or Scots Gaelic dictionary pre-1963 has craic. To rhyme with ‘crack’ the Gaelic would be creac. Craic is pronounced ‘crick’.”

And Francis Bergin says: “I am an avid reader of Matthew Parris. However, while Kipling may well have written ‘The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire’ (June 20), the Apostle Peter wrote these words first, nearly 2,000 years earlier (II Peter ii, 22).”

Forever young

Finally a word of praise from Mina Murray: “On behalf of all kids (including the big kids such as myself who never intend to grow up), I want to express my appreciation to you for providing an engaging section of your newspaper for young people. There are too few resources that provide news in an educational format palatable to children. While I’m a cover-to-cover reader of The Times, when I see the Young Times section I’m left with a particularly big smile on my face. I’d be a disgrace to my field if I didn’t request more science topics, though.” Good idea; perhaps if we explain kilowatts and kilowatt-hours in language an eight-year-old can understand, the rest of us will get it too.