A Birmingham reader who should, I think, remain nameless sends us a postcard about a Times columnist whom I shall also decline to name, as a wider point is being made here: “What is X for? It’s the worst, most banal, of any column currently in the press. He has no insights, no valuable observations . . . in fact he is not even interesting.”

Times readers are diverse in terms of age, education, background, ethnicity, social class, income, interests and so on; and so, we hope, are our columnists. We employ as wide a range of them as possible, in the certain knowledge that not all of them will appeal to all of our readers all of the time, but in the fervent hope that some of them will appeal to all of our readers some of the time. If we achieve that — and your letters suggest that we do — we are content.

X, incidentally, gets as much praise as opprobrium, and that’s as it should be. If all of you enjoyed all of the columns equally, and never found anything to complain about, I’d be out of a job, for a start.

Lorna Irwin writes from Hampshire: “I would like to express my annoyance over a few of the poorly worded and punctuated headings on some of your articles.

“One of the most exasperating of these must surely be ‘Woman branded lazy since a child had a massive hole in her heart’ (March 14). I needed to read this a couple of times before I could get the gist of what it was trying to say. What is wrong with ‘Woman branded lazy as a child, had a massive hole in her heart’?”

Absolutely nothing, but by long tradition newspapers do not punctuate news headlines as punctuation slows them down, and they are meant to be a fast, concise, punchy form of shorthand designed to tempt you to read the story beneath, even if the result does occasionally require a second reading to sort the meaning out.

Elizabeth Ricketts, of Reading, e-mails: “My father noticed in a recent leader that the author wrote ‘professional ethics forbid us . . . ’ According to my dictionary ethics is a singular noun, so it should have read forbids us. This is part of a great shift in understanding of singulars and plurals.

“Another leader writer wrote, ‘What are needed are transparency in regulations and consistency in operations’, but ‘what’ is also singular (see Fowler). I expect Times writers to lead the way in correctness, not follow the general drift downwards!”

Claire Booth writes from Bristol: “Please could you point out to John Bungey (CD reviews, The Knowledge, March 15) the difference between Caledonia and Hibernia. I was under the impression that Van Morrison is Irish, so was very surprised to read that he has a Caledonian soul.”

John Bungey replies: “VM chose to call his band the Caledonian Soul Orchestra way back in 1972 and has touted his music as Caledonian soul since. Geographically perverse, I know, but it makes sense to him.”

Margaret Stephen, of Surrey, is too young, she says, to remember Empire Day (Past Notes, March 15), “but I was raised on Kipling, and much though he worshipped His Maker, the final verse of ‘The Children’s Song’ from Puck of Pook’s Hill begins ‘Land of our birth’, not ‘Lord’ as you had it. I still have my father’s copy (price 3d) of the musical setting by J. B. Miles and have vivid memories of singing it with fervent patriotic pride.”

Our apologies for the silly slip.

First we don’t know our emu from our kiwi (letter, March 15), and now Debbie Ward of Ashford is cancelling her next trip to Australia for fear of coming face to face with a 7ft koala, as reported by us in last Saturday’s world news: “\ can grow to 23-33cm (60-85in).” Strewth. We’ve only got the wombat left to insult, although the great philosopher Ogden Nash advised against: “The wombat lives across the seas among the far Antipodes./ He may exist on nuts and berries, or then again on missionaries./ His distant habitat precludes conclusive knowledge of his moods,/ But I would not engage the wombat in any form of mortal combat.”

Still, the 7ft koala can’t compare with our legendary 30kg mouse-eared bat, which devotees of the letters page will recall fondly; your assorted wit on this mythic beast (it should have read 30g) once filled an entire broadsheet column of shorts. Happy days.

And happy Easter to you all.

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