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Getting typecast in a 1950s newsroom

Among the hazards of hot metal (The changing art of the subeditor: ‘You had to read the type upside down’, 2 August) were stone hands misplacing type slabs. When I was a trainee on the Keighley News in the 1950s, just as it got to the bride, a wedding report morphed into an account of a prize-winning bitch at a dog show. A correction was out of the question. They had to run both stories again the following week.
Don Chapman
Witney, Oxfordshire

• Well done, Zoe Williams, for your first donation of O negative blood (I don’t like to boast – but even my blood is special, 3 August). I’ve been a donor since 1968 and have made 100 donations. My group is B positive, which sums up my attitude to life. If Zoe is still making donations in 33 years, she too will achieve her 100 badge.
Margaret Antill
Potters Bar, Hertfordshire

• Sorry to spoil your lunch, Conor (Letters, 1 August), but having spent childhood summers in County Cavan, they always talked of having dinner at lunchtime. But it may be an English term, as I’d bring my dinner money to school to have a meal served by dinner ladies at lunchtime.
Peter Stewart
Northfields, London

• As a CEO in the 1990s, I received a letter addressed to the “thief executive” (Letters, 3 August). Long discussions followed as to whether it was a typo or not.
Peter Constable
Cambridge

• I’m waiting for you to publish a letter from a retired proctologist recounting his tale of an envelope addressed to Mr Colin O’Scopy.
Duncan Grimmond
Markington, North Yorkshire

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