THE ECONOMIST

There is so much reading in every issue of this magazine that it ranks as my favourite aircraft reading.

In the issue of January 5-11 , not the one shown here, which I bought at LAX to read on the long journey across the Pacific to Auckland, I came across the following short paragraph which I thought made a lot of sense:

Style guidance

Short words are easy to spell and easy to understand. Use them. Thus prefer about to approximately, after to following, let to permit, but to however, make to manufacture, use to utilise and so on. www.economist.com/style.

And here is another brief paragraph, from the presidential primaries, which was widely reported in the US media:

"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately." Chelsea Clinton refuses to be interviewed by any journalists, even a nine year old for Scholastic News.