After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.

The advent of the mobile phone was a disaster. We are forced to listen, open-mouthed, to other people's intimate conversations. Increasingly, we are all in our virtual bubbles when we are out in public, whether we are texting, listening to iPods, reading or just staring dangerously at other people.

After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.

I hate to be treated as if I'm invisible. I get incensed when people talk across me or refuse to catch my eye in a restaurant or shop.

Brackets come in various shapes, types and names: 1 round brackets (which we call brackets, and the Americans call parentheses) 2 square brackets [which we call square brackets, and the Americans call brackets]

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.