Further to our advice last week about getting on the electoral roll quick-smart, well, you have until tomorrow night if you have never enrolled before. Several readers have pointed out what Column 8 should have pointed out at the time - that if you are 17 years old, but turn 18 between now and November 24, you can still enrol. It's all about how old you are on the day, not how old you are now.

More electoral material, from Stephen Murray of Campbelltown: "Surely the first parliamentary election in Togo for 20 years this weekend is crying out for the headline 'Togo to go to polls'."

"We only buy the weekend edition of the Herald," writes Janice Wasley of Nowra, and while we frown upon such a policy, we will not spurn her query, which is this: "For two weekends in a row I have read the American term 'downtown' in articles. Does anyone know what the term 'downtown' means? Please don't let us become Americanised." Americanisation of the language is something we have rolled our sleeves up and dealt with here many times - some words from across the waves are great, and some just grate. But Janice gives us an opening to ask this - what on earth is the difference between "downtown" and "uptown"?

"Jan Howard Finder must have talked to an unusually ill-informed museum curator," writes Bill Noble, of Macquarie University ("Why is Hampshire abbreviated as HANTS?", Column 8, yesterday). "Hamtunscir is first recorded as such in 755. It was named from Hamtun, the old name for Southampton. The HANTS abbreviation comes from the Doomsday Book entry, where it was transcribed by Latin-trained French speaking clerics as Hantescire. Scir is Old English for shire." Simple, eh?

"A conversation earlier today has prompted me to rethink my stance on spacing after a full stop," writes Luke McGrath of Queanbeyan. "I had always adhered to two spaces after a full stop (or other sentence-ender, like a question mark). However, there seems to be some debate on whether one or two spaces is appropriate. I'm unsure if Column 8 has tackled this one before, but is there an Australian standard?" Yes, there is. Well, to be more precise, there ARE. We use single spaces here, like right-thinking people everywhere. Law firms, on the other hand, always use two spaces. We suspect that this is designed to extend documents, which thus require further pages of photocopying, a service for which they routinely charge like demented bison.

A mug's game? "To all those people out there who bet only once a year, be warned that the TAB can take money out of your online betting account if you don't use it in six months," warns Julia Archer of Dural. "I went to deposit $50 for my annual plunge on the Melbourne Cup to find my balance had been eaten up by 'management fees' of $5.50 per month."

Column8@smh.com.au (no attachments please).Phone 9282 2207 fax 9282 2772. (include name, suburb, daytime phone)