AMONGST the sometimes amusing; sometimes rabid; and sometimes just plain mad feedback we get here at the INQ, there's one theme that recurs time after time - spelling.

We take a simple view on spelling - we try to get it right, regardless of what overpaid cokeheads in marketing departments believe. Hence when a company thinks it's really big and clever to call a product the 'cOmpuTer', we change it to 'Computer' out of respect for the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer and Magee.

All Via press releases have a note at the end that advises editors that VIA must be written in ALL CAPS. No it doesn't. It's not the Very Important Actually company, it's Via. Upper case first letter, lower case for the rest.

IBM is different - it's an acronym, standing for International Business Machines. Via just wants to be all caps. The only brand name we like to cap up is The INQUIRER. The rest can just behave.

Apple, is of course, in a class of its own, or should we say iTs own? If we had a quid for each email that complains we can't spell "iPod", we'd have enough cash to go off and do something more uselful.

The basic rules of English state that a proper noun should begin with a capital letter. So we call an iPod an Ipod. Apple would no doubt prefer that we referred to an iPod (tm)(R)(SM)(c), but we ain't going to do that, so there.

These names are names. Proper nouns. All that mid-word capital-letter guff is all marketing. And we don't do marketing here.

Readers should also check to see if a bizarre concept named 'irony' might have crept into our stories before reaching for the green crayons. µ