Irony piled upon irony

REGARDING the debate over “who needs subs?”, Hannah Bannerman (Letters, last issue) takes the Journalist to task for a literal in the Alan Johnston piece in the previous edition with the words: “There’s a great deal of irony in making a fuss about the lack of subbing on page 13, and then going on to actually publish a poorly subbed article on page 21.”

There is also a great deal of irony in having a pop at someone else’s efforts while finding a way to actually split an infinitive in doing so.

Perhaps this was a cunning “plant” to see whether it would be picked up by a sub, rather than a manifestation of the regrettable trend that deems it acceptable to boldly split infinitives that have never been split before.

Martin Smethurst
Woking, Surrey

The Journalist is published by the National Union of Journalists