The other week, your reporter informed us we had a "defendant" in court, and now we are told that Angus Sinclair was convicted of manslaughter for killing a child in Glasgow (The families laid low by Angus Sinclair's evil, News, November 16).

There is no such crime.

Scottish legal terms aren't simply funny words for English or American terms. There is a difference between, for example, housebreaking and burglary, fireraising and arson, or fatal accident inquiries and inquests.

Maggie Thatcher found this out when she claimed an English injunction would prevent publication of Spycatcher in Scotland, then tried to interdict the world on the grounds that "interdict" was simply a Scottish word for "injunction".

The concept of the law being different was hard for her to understand, but surely a Sunday Herald reporter should be able to grasp it.

Mairead Mackechnie

Bowmore

Isle of Islay