YOU say Biro, we write ballpoint pen. You say Thermos, we write vacuum flask. Jacuzzi becomes whirlpool spa bath. And when you say Hoover, we write vacuum cleaner - because it might be an Electrolux or a Dyson.

Trade names are a constant trap for newspapers, especially those that pass into the language to stand for all similar products. Remember the fuss over which lingerie company could legally call their bra the Wonderbra?

Familiar names like these are part of everyday speech, so it must strike you as odd when we come up with awkward alternatives.

Not without good reason, though. Owners of trade names jealously guard their reputations, employing specialist cuttings agencies to go on foot patrol through the nation's papers to see how they are mentioned.

Quite reasonably, they do not like their products linked unfairly to the more unpleasant aspects of life, though I suspect they are quietly delighted at the free advertising when a brand name slips through in connection with good news.

For example, if we use a specific brand name instead of a generic description, more often than not a letter will arrive from a swanky firm of London lawyers demanding corrections, retractions, floggings all round, plus solemn promises, preferably written in blood, never to do it again.

So reporters and sub-editors have it dinned into them to avoid trade names slipping into stories. It becomes a reflex action. But last week we took it to absurd lengths and totally ruined a rhyme by Margaret Pracy.

She was among hundreds of women all over the country asked to nominate objects which represented their lives. Margaret was one of seven women from Sussex chosen to feature in the prestigious Everyday Icons exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. To accompany her choice of a vacuum cleaner, she wrote the charming couplet: 'I would rather have a Hoover than a moonlight manoeuvre.'

You know what's coming next. A sub-editor pounced automatically on the word Hoover and replaced it with vacuum cleaner. So not only did we render the poem nonsense, but also, to make it worse, spelt Margaret's surname wrong in our story. Please accept my apologies.

We published a wrong Bonus Ball number for the National Lottery a couple of weeks ago. Sorry to all who had any hopes of a win dashed, and especially to G Commons, from Brighton, who uses the numbers for a sweepstake at the sheltered accom-modation where he lives. We will try to take more care.

In an article the week before last urging parents to be aware of meningitis symptoms we were slightly adrift with the phone number of the Meningitis Research Foundation. Sorry, the correct Freefone number is 080 8800 3344.

And finally, bottom of the class for us over our maths in some editions in the feature on Monday about new European laws demanding goods now sold loose by the pound, such as fruit and veg, must be sold on the metric system. Bill Humphries, from Brighton, said any shopper using our advice would be confused, and bankrupted. Asking for 10kg would get 22lb, not 4.53lb as we said. We corrected the mistake for later editions, but thanks, Bill, for the conversion chart. Stick to 1kg equals 2.2lb and 1lb equals 0.454kg, and you'll be all right.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.