Your Letters
18:21 UK time, Thursday, 9 October 2008
It seems that live text commentary, a technique used to great effect in reporting football scores and the like, is creeping into other news areas, with the unfolding financial crisis being reported as a . Can we expect to see Lawro's predictions on the next bank to fail? And what other developing crises will be given the live text treatment in future - armed sieges? Earthquakes? Military stand-offs?
Tim Barrow, London, UK
Am I to take it, then, that a milliard (which is to say a thousand million) is now being termed a billion in accordance with the American number-naming tradition? I remember when billions were colossal, a million million apiece, and the notion of being (for instance) a billionaire was thus fantastically exciting. How times have changed!
Ben Goudie, Leeds, UK
Regarding PM's comment on the "Indie" patronising its readership by stating 500 thousand million, they are of course quite correct in the traditional British (and in fact logical) system of numbering, which means that a billion is a million million, making the number quoted a piffling 1/2 billion pounds. Hardly worth worrying about really...
Owain Davies, Burgess Hill, UK
Re . The story says that they will add 2 zeroes to take it from a capacity of a trillion to a quadrillion. Surely 2 zeroes would only allow the clock to go to 999 trillion. Sorry to be a pedant.
Dave, London
May I commend to the all-noun headline judges?
Helen, Cambridge
Re Crunch Creep, you say that "Sales of maternity dresses are up because we are getting more frisky in hard times." . But might it just be because "The British are turning to cake to cheer themselves up in the face of mounting gloom"
Ian, South London
I read that more middle-class shoppers are going to Poundland. So when are we getting the chance to open an account with Poundlandsbanki?
Rob Falconer, Llandough, Wales
Nominative Determinism in full force! is called Mr. Hands.
Mike Harper, Devon, UK
How to make statistics on a graph look really, really bad.
Stuart, Croydon
"A great book minus a plot = just words." Well Martin, that's true unless you're James Joyce and then for some reason it means you're a genius.
Kipson, Norwich, UK
In the US, there is a TV commercial running for the fast food restaurant Arby's. In it, one man makes a bet that if he can't get a meal for under $5, he will marry a goat. In the final scene he is sitting at a table wearing a tux next to a goat wearing a white veil. I am convinced the writer of this commercial is an avid reader of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website. Perhaps a little too avid...
Beverly, Michgan, US
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