IAN MEIKLE muses about words. WORDS are to me as horseshoes are to a blacksmith; I forge the adjectives, hammer the verbs and cobble them into sentences that are shaped into paragraphs, columns, pages and papers. Ian Meikle. Am I a wordsmith, I vainly wondered. “A skilled user of words,” Google confirmed. A lifetime in journalism hasn’t been a waste then, though truth be told, I’ve never felt particularly gifted with an especially grandiose vocabulary (though I do know what crapulent I feel words. Other wordsmiths’ toes curl at the mere mention of a gerund** and they take split infinitives very personally. Not me. I like the metre (rhythm) of active news reporting and can be very forgiving in my editing, favouring substance over form.Â