George Keleny: Every Thursday night, Dad's there with his trusty OED

My dad's column has been going for 12 years, ever since the editor of the paper summoned him to his office and suggested that his weekly internal report on the errors committed by The Independent's journalists might amuse the readers as well. So what's it like to live with the column?

Well, it has no name in our house. From my point of view, it's a bit like a poltergeist: you never know if it's there, and you do your best to avoid talking about it, but every so often it gets in the way of using the internet.

To my mother, on the other hand, it has always been a source of amusement. It's lucky she likes it, since she's the one who checks the grammar. For the man who actually writes it, the column will always be a way to fill up a Thursday night, accompanied by his faithful sidekick, a two-volume Oxford English Dictionary.

Perhaps the publication of this compilation will herald a new era in pedantry. But it seems unlikely. It's been going for more than a decade, and it seems the people who write the paper still haven't learned to spell.