Wednesday, March 7, 2001

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

The precise and accurate use of words is a serious issue with conscientious writers.

Words are our building blocks. At the risk of being melodramatic, I believe the integrity of our writing is at risk when we misuse words, just as surely as the strength of a building is compromised if any component of it is out of place. (Check your word skills on your way through today's column, and we'll give you the correct spelling or meaning elsewhere.)

I rejoiced when it became possible to e-mail copy straight into the paper's computer system, eliminating the risk of someone else miscopying what I turned in on paper. The downside, of course, is that on the incredibly rare occasion that I do make an error, I can't blame a copyist.

As you know, I belong to SPELL, the Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature, and I devour its bimonthly newsletter. "Murderers' Row" is a regular feature the centerfold, actually containing "Examples of the Pervasive Poisoning of the Mother Tongue as Seen and Heard by Members of SPELL."

The current issue, for instance, has the usual gaffes committed in forming the possessive of "it" and proper names, plus gems like the Chicago Tribune column that included, "Just whom do you think you are, Mayflower descendents?" and an AP story that described "vistas of emerald-green rice patties."

So when a mistake appears in my work, whether of my doing or someone else's, I cringe lest it find its way into Murderers' Row.

It could have happened in December when I recounted a bizarre incident in which a deer crashed through a plate glass window in a fire station. When the story published, I was horrified to find two references to "chards of glass" imbedded in the furniture. Away to my hard drive I flew like a flash, and found that I had indeed written "shards of glass." A willful spell-checker at the newspaper office inexplicably rejected shards and offered chards, and slipped them past my editor, distracted by a paste-up deadline.

I don't need that kind of help, thank you.

When it comes to verbal correctness, I can be my own worst enemy. As I was in a story about going to EMT school, when I said someone was in the class "along with Stan, Al, Richard and I." Ouch. And as I was when I wrote that I was going to canvas friends for home-decorating ideas.

I'm bad to mix metaphors, too (and obviously I'm bad to slip in colloquialisms). On rereading copy I submitted just last week, concerning Fayette County houses worth more than $1 million, I found the following curious juxtaposition of images: "The home ... crouches, fenced and gated, at the rear of a vast lawn in south Fayette. Massive quoins seem to root it in the earth."

Doesn't "crouch" suggest a posture ready to spring into action at any moment? Whatever this imaginary creature is, it would hardly be rooted in the earth.

That story did give me a chance to use a word that seldom sees the light of day except on a Scrabble board: quoin. I looked it up in my well-worn Webster's to be sure of its application, as I did the following, all of which turned up in reading or instruction: deracination, execrate, cynosure, collywobbles, melisma.

In the process (don't ask me how) I also discovered the charming origins of "Frisbee." Of the above, "melisma" caused me the most grief. I hate it when a word sneaks up on me without even a familiar root for a clue, especially in a context in which I'm expected to have a modicum of expertise. I was spelling it "malisma," incorrectly, I later learned, effectively subverting any hope of defining it.

As I often do, I called my former editor and current friend, Viki, and asked her to look it up in her Oxford English Dictionary. She in turn asked me how to make "McDonald's," which is the correct name for the franchise, possessive, as in "a McDonald's's cup." I said, "Don't bother you wouldn't say a Burger Chef's cup; you'd say a Burger Chef cup. Just say "a McDonald's cup."

Then I got to thinking, how would you pluralize a word that's possessive, as in, "They're opening two new McDonald'ses in our town"? I wrote my editor and asked him. He said, "Two McDonald's restaurants, and a partridge in a Burger King. Put 'em next to the KMart's." Desperate times call for desperate measures: Best move to a town with better eating habits.

Corrections and definitions:

Possessive of "it" is always "its."

"Who do you think ... descendants?"

rice paddies.

Glass breaks in shards; chards are tasty greens.

"along with ... me"

To canvass is to survey; canvas is tight-woven cloth.

quoins: large blocks that form the external corner of a building.

deracination: pulling up by the roots, eradicating.

execrate: to denounce hatefully, to call down evil upon.

cynosure: person or thing that is the center of attention or interest.

collywobbles: a bellyache.

melisma: a succession of different notes sung on a single syllable.

Frisbee: altered "Frisbie"; tins from Mother Frisbie's pies, originally used for a game by students at Yale.

Any plural of Kmart is too many.

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