Words we should staff the barricades against | Brief letters

Manning crisis | Having a laugh | Kemi’s conundrum | Vertical drinking | Ann Droid and self-driving taxis

As someone working in human resources who has spent years encouraging colleagues to use the word “staffing” rather than “manning”, I find it ironic that in reviewing the TV series Furious, which is “powered [by] female rage” (27 July), Lucy Mangan wrote that its lead character Alice Black “is manning the FBI tip line”.
Kathy Ashton
York

• Mark Lawson states that Jimmy Cricket’s “retained native accent allowed him to rhyme ‘faffing’ with ‘laughing’” (No smut, no swearing, wrong-feet wellies and a silly hat: the gentle comedy world of Jimmy Cricket, 4 August). As most of the UK’s English speakers would say, these words do rhyme. It is only some from southern England and a few other areas who pronounce laughing incorrectly.
Gordon Glassford
Corby, Northamptonshire

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