Sir – From the space he devoted in his column of March 10 to rebutting my assertion about his having omitted a comma from an earlier piece, it would appear my harmless correction got well and truly under the skin of your esteemed culture and restaurant correspondent.

How else are we to explain his hesitation to waste time on one so wrong-headed as me about punctuation having been overcome at such length?

That you printed my letter and Mr Gray’s riposte would seem to indicate that you, too, in the best traditions of newspaper correspondence columns, scented blood and a protracted battle of words?

What confuses me utterly about that riposte, however, is that it (unwittingly or wittily and self-deprecatingly, if I could be convinced of those qualities being present) turns round and agrees with me, after Mr Gray states he does not accept the case.

In Oxford of all places, I’m sure many of your readers need no tutorial about the difference between “Reconsider Christopher Gray” (which, in all charity, I ought to do one of these fine days) and “Reconsider, Christopher Gray” (which, in all charity, I should like him to do).

If he did not intend to remind the jocular soul of his acquaintance that he (Gray) had to watch his diet, about which and its freedom from cholesterol we have all read many times over the years, then I must have misunderstood.

As to my (allegedly) having committed a tautology by calling an admonition gentle, which I do not accept to be the case, I would admonish Mr Gray he should consult the SOD, where the noun is defined by other nouns: “The action of admonishment; . . . warning, reproof” without the tendentious addition of a convenient adjective.

At least, in common with all your other correspondents, the article now carries only one small photograph beside the byline.

Michael Moorey, West Hendred