SIR – Are any of your readers very or profoundly deaf? And do any of them watch television and try to make sense of the sound by using the subtitles?

I say ‘try’ because I am rather deaf, and try to use them. I find that, except on closely-scripted shows such as Emmerdale, the so-called subtitles are at best absolute rubbish, and quite often totally incomprehensible, hardly ever bearing any relation to the spoken words.

Invented words are common, completely wrong ones even more so – watch any news bulletin on TV, and guess at the meaning of the subtitles!

Recently BBC news at 1pm produced ‘now’ and ‘nerd’ for ‘nerve’ in the same sentence, and we got ‘in sex’ for ‘insects’ among many other bloopers – how ridiculous can you get?

Ian R McDougall, Hawkswood Avenue, Heaton