— “I grow ever more weary of news reports that assume a drop in house prices is necessarily bad news for home owners,” writes Brian Bailey.

“I am a homeowner hoping to upgrade in the near future along with, I would have thought, numerous others, and a drop in house prices is very welcome to me as it means a reduction in the extra money I will have to find. Any reports of such changes should beware of betraying the biases of the writers, the editors, the advising estate agents or whomsoever.”

We get similar complaints when we report an interest-rate rise as bad news; oh no it isn’t, you cry in your dozens, not for those of us free of mortgages and other borrowings.

You are all, of course, quite right, but our job is to make daily editorial judgments as to how the news will affect the majority of Times readers, and therefore how to present it for maximum interest. We wouldn’t sell many papers with a front-page banner headline reading “House prices collapse — good news for some, bad news for others”. Anyway, it wouldn’t fit.

— My recent round-up of superfluous prepositions — meet with, lose out, for free, and so on — reopened an old wound for David Cordiner of Birmingham: “I took part in a correspondence on this in 1973, pointing out that ‘consult with’ retains the idea of seeking specialist advice (unlike ‘confer with’), but with less deference than ‘consult’.

“But the original complainant, having been a very senior civil servant, got a second letter published in which he indicated that he had no time for the advice of a mere lecturer in linguistics. It still rankles.”

Time to move on, Mr Cordiner.

— Barbara Kley of London has the opposite problem — a dearth, rather than a surfeit, of prepositions: “Could Times writers please refrain from using that appalling Americanism ‘throwing something out the window’? There were two instances of this in the recent report about the shooting incident in Chelsea.”

And Peter Wade e-mails from Essex: “I have noticed you are emulating the BBC by getting rid of ‘before’. All announcements are made ‘ahead of’, as in ‘Ahead of its annual general meeting on Tuesday, Bovis Homes warned . . . ’ Please bring back before, ahead of my going mad.”

— Wadham Sutton writes: “As one who struggles constantly with the times2 quiz, may I ask why there seems to be such a preoccupation with rock and pop music and sport?

“Could we have a few more questions on cultural subjects, like classical music, art and great literature — the sort of thing we might expect from a prestigious paper like The Times, but which the quiz at present seems to disregard rather?”

As one who rarely attempts, let alone struggles with, the quiz I can’t comment, but I have forwarded the request to its compiler.

— John Darrall of Rutland detects, “in the printed and spoken word, an increased use (misuse) of the word ‘proven’. Joe Joseph used it in his Modern Morals column in times2.

“According to my copy of Fowler (1940 edition!) ‘Proved, not proven, is the regular p.p., the latter being properly from the verb preve used in Scotland after it had given way to prove in England; cf. weave, woven, cleave, cloven. Except in the phrase not proven as a quotation from Scottish law, proven is better left alone’.”

The style guide is relaxed on the matter. “Proven: not proven is the Scottish legal verdict. In general use, prefer proved to proven; but proven and unproven may be used as a colloquial alternative.”

The defence rests.

— This column is the natural habitat of pedants, and as you know I am on the whole pretty tolerant of pedantry, as it helps to pass the time at Feedback Towers, not to mention filling the space. But a card from Sir Brian Young of Gerrards Cross has cheered me up with a new perspective on the matter: “Those of us who are precisians (a kinder word, just discovered) are grateful for your care of us. We enjoyed recently (from Gerard Baker) ‘the garment-renting chorus of professional bears’.”

Precisians of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our hanging participles.

— Feedback is shutting up shop for a week while I take some R & R in the South of France; à bientôt, mes amis.