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Helen Sword's piece on academics writing for a wider audience ("Narrative trust", 6 September) omitted to mention some of the pitfalls.

For example, the more carefully written a piece is, the more likely it is to be brutally copy-edited by a staffer ignorant of the elementary rules of grammar.

At least one monthly with a large circulation believes in inserting into one's text chunks of misleading and irrelevant data couched in stodgy prose copied word for word from Wikipedia: the editor proudly informed me that as editor he had the final say in the phrasing and content of material published under my name.

A.D. Harvey, London