The Pedant's Revolt

Thank you all for your excellent and very entertaining suggestions. I have opted (initially at least!) to send the letter back to the Marketing Manager, cunningly reserving other options if necessary:

Dear Nick Boaden

Thank you for sending me the letter about To Kill a Mockingbird, which is an excellent novel: I hope the stage production will be excellent too.

However, I’m not sure how the two spelling mistakes in the middle slipped through the net: Ian McKellan and Judy Dench don’t exist – or if they do they’re not actors – whereas Ian McKellen and Judi Dench are two of the best-known actors in the country.

So famous are they, in fact, that almost everyone who has received your letter knows how to spell their names: so it was a bit of a shock that the West Yorkshire Playhouse doesn’t.

Best wishes (etc)
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We shall see whether he replies.

Meanwhile, I notice that my own husband Stephen is taking me to task for use of the word none in the following sentence in my recent post about fungi:

"Unfortunately my grandmother dug them out every year - she no doubt thought they were rude - and now there are none left."

Of course, for grammatical correctness, it should read "now there is none left" because "none" is a shortening of "not one". But even I have to confess that "now there is none left" sounds a bit clumsy: has "now there are none left" slipped into the language for good? How far back do we go with the meanings of words? Should atheists stop saying goodbye because it means "God be with ye"?

And, by the way, who taught Stephen that "none" means "not one"? - - Er, me. Talk about hoist by your own flaming petard.