My postbox is bombarded every day with offers of seminars from a multitude of providers. Now on offer is a ‘Crash Course on Punctuation & Grammar’. Have standards of entry to our profession dropped to such an all-time low that our solicitors require after-admission training on the use of commas and colons?

Sadly gone are the days when I entered the long and arduous route to qualification as a solicitor of the Supreme Court, along which Latin was an essential examination subject for admission to any university law faculty. And a thorough knowledge of English grammar to A-level standard was a sine qua non.

I guess that the day will soon come when judgments are handed down couched in ‘text speak’ and Twitterese as the art of letter writing declines. Perhaps the writing is on the wall for the adage, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’?

David Kirwan,Kirwans Solicitors, Merseyside