Putting the accent on our reporting

Sir — I wish to express my concern with the lack of use of the Irish fada in the Sunday Independent. As a trainee teacher, I buy your newspaper every week and I use some of its content as an example of journalistic writing within my classroom. Your articles can be successfully used to engage children in reading comprehension.

However, I have been concerned with the absence of any use of the fada in your articles. For a native Irish language speaker, the absence of the fada changes the sound of the word completely.

I hope the fada can become part of your reporting very soon. I would hate for the paper to fail in its obligation to attract Irish speakers to the English language newspaper.

Conchubhar de Faoite,

Kilcavan, Co Laois

The editor writes: I can’t say I agree with the non-use of the fada either — I’m not sure how long this policy has been in place but we’ll be changing it soon. The fada will be appearing from the edition published on Sunday, August 9.