READER Robert A Segal wrote a letter defending the Israeli occupation of Palestine lands captured in the Arab-Israeli war (Citizen, February 20).

To conclude his letter, he wrote that Mr John Whitelegg of the Green Party should 'brush up on his English', for Mr Whitelegg had written the expression if it was rather than if it were.

Normally, I would never criticise anyone's use of the English language, but in this case it would appear necessary to defend Mr Whitelegg's right to use English as he deems fit.

During the 1970s there was a debate between grammarians and language teachers upon whether to allow the commonly used if it was rather than the traditional if it were when using the subjunctive tense.

As grammarians have often pointed out, English is a living language and there are no fixed grammatical rules, only guide-lines to currently accepted usage.

The syntactical structure if it was being so common in general spoken speech, it was eventually decided that both types of syntax were acceptable in spoken and in written form.

In all the language books I used in the 1990s only the more common if it was appeared in print. The morale of this story is that in language as in politics, one has to keep up with the times.

Graham Cunnington, Clarendon Road, Morecambe.