A few years ago, I wrote an article in a football fanzine about the media’s infuriating practice of inserting a second ‘o’ in the word ‘Middlesbrough’, making ‘Middlesborough’.

In their ‘irreverent’ ‘Football Diary’ section the next week, The Guardian newspaper made satirical mention of the piece. This was sumptuously ironic as they were, and still are, by far the most frequent culprits of this crime against spelling, sense, atlases (oh how I wish the plural were ‘atlai’) and encyclopaedias (ditto ‘encyclopaedi’, although that does sound a bit like a trendy name for the Sex Offenders’ Register).

Further, the region Middlesbrough is located in often appears as ‘Teeside’ (it is ‘Teesside’, as in beside the River Tees). I have written to the Guardian on several occasions in the last year alone on both counts, but replies there have come none, to use an incredibly irritating current linguistic style (see “up with that they will not put”).

Today, though, the sub-editors of the newspaper have surpassed themselves.

The letters page in the Sports section carries missives directly next to each other in which BOTH spellings are used:

What a logic defying approach to sub-editing. Schizophrenic, in fact. Or, perhaps the sub-editor was a bit like a flawed character from a rubbish sitcom who couldn’t decide which ‘gal’ to take to dinner (Middlesbrough or Middlesborough?) so dated both at once, despite there being no apparent need to do so.

As if that was not enough, look at the headline above the second letter. Unless they are making a pun on that well known phrase about the pleasure of surprisingly stumbling upon a tightly braided rope, then I think, Betty, they’ve done another whoopsie.

This country.