Nice cross-threading, tsuwm! I love this:
William Safire


‘IN RHETORIC, however," I lazily wrote, "parrhesia has a specialized meaning." In zinged a mock-irate letter from Alistair Cooke, founder of what he called Sanpickle - the "Safire Nit Pickers’ League".

Did I write this unnecessary "ize", he demanded, on personalized notepaper, to be read by customized shirts? "Your little flourish of bloviation provoked spasms of sarcasm, like ‘I suppose if he got in trouble in England he’d go looking for a Specialized Constable, ie, a constable appointed for specialized occasions.’"

Then there was the time I wrote "our mutual fascination", an error that drew Cooke’s "You mean ‘our common’ or ‘our shared’ fascination. ‘Our mutual fascination’ means our fascination with each other: ‘Our mutual fascination with’ anything is nonsense, you dummy! And I thought you were the American language wallah!" He signed it "Your mutual pedant". I sent him a copy of the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend.

What fun they must have had!