Some Readers Get Downright Accusative

The two worst things I did in 1988, judging from reader response, were eating a dog and using the nominative case for the accusative in a personal pronoun.

This clearly affirms my suspicion that the typical reader of this corner of the newspaper is sensitive and highly intelligent.

The dog thing really was blown out of proportion. I ate a couple teensy bites of a dog stew at a restaurant in Seoul, South Korea. It was an important aspect of my coverage of the culture of the Olympic Games’ host country.

Dozens of readers wrote, most of them stating that their main objection to the custom of dog eating in Korea is the ancient belief that the slower the death of the animal, the more potent the meat.

I really don’t want to get into that dog business, except to mention that my particular meal died of natural causes, in his sleep, after a long and full life.

To say any more of that incident would be beating a dead horse, and not for purposes of tenderizing.

What I’m worried about right now is the pronoun thing. When it comes to the nominative and accusative, I am an accident waiting to happen.

This latest felonious assault on Noah Webster’s rules took place in a recent column dealing with an alleged rift between L.A. Kings Coach Robbie Ftorek and his star player, Wayne Gretzky.

I wrote: “Asked if there was any truth to the rumors of a rift between he and Ftorek, Gretzky said, ‘Absolutely not...’ ”

That day, I shoulda stood in bed. I shoulda used him instead of he .

“Good heavens,” wrote Helen G. Alexander.

“Deathless prose,” wrote the obviously droll Jack Chasson.

“Say it isn’t so, Scott!” wrote Ross W. Amspoker.

“Tst-tst,” wrote Griff Niblack, whose hyphenated critique I have disallowed because I couldn’t find “tst-tst” in either of the two dictionaries I checked. Like offsetting penalties in football, his language misuse and mine cancel one another out (or is it “cancel each other out”? Or should “out” immediately follow “cancel”? Have mercy).

Unlike the dog lobby (referring here to a group of people, not to the entry room in a doghouse), the watchdogs of grammar tend to be charitable and even flattering to those they are correcting.

Two readers who spotted the pronoun error blamed it on the Times typesetter. They hit the nail upon the head. It was the typesetter who screwed up, I’m happy to say.

I’m sad to add that in our modern system of computerized typesetting, the typesetter of my column is me (I?).

The encouraging thing about all this is that people still care about the language. I had plucked a sour chord on the ukulele of good grammar. I had scraped my fingernails across the blackboard of proper English.

“I loathe seeing jarring mistakes,” reader Alexander wrote, “and that using the nominative case for the accusative in personal pronouns is getting out-of-hand. I really fear we shall eventually lose all the pronouns ending in ‘m’: him, them, whom.”

Through a hole in the ozone layer, no doubt.

“By the way,” Ms. Alexander added, “I was delighted to see your ‘whom’ in this same article: ‘The Kings, depending on whom you believe . . . ‘ “

Lucky guess.

The truth is, a lot of this stuff I just don’t know. I chalk it up to a flaw in our educational system. Instead of waiting for the right time, they teach you these rules of grammar in the 11th grade, when all you can think about in English class is whether or not the girl sitting next to you thinks your new haircut is dorky.

When finally you are old enough to concentrate on the rules of grammar, and maybe even to care, nobody is around to teach you.

Also, in my defense, I deal with sports people. It’s all I can do to, y’know, keep myself, y’know, from, y’know, lapsing into their bad, y’know, like, habits. Y’know? I mean, you spend an hour with Sparky Anderson and you ain’t got no chance of not never gettin’ no language right again, ever, nohow.

I try. Hopefully, I never misuse “hopefully.” I know that when someone says, “Hopefully, the Rams will advance to the playoffs,” what they have said is that the Rams will enter the playoffs with an attitude of hopefulness. I learned that from readers.

So you can teach an old dog new tricks, even if the old dog ain’t Lassie.

In the interest of coming clean for the new year, I humbly confess to my mistakes. Hopefully, I hope that I have not caused budding young sports columnists out there to believe it’s cool to play fast and loose with the accusative case.

For 1988, I hereby resolve to be kinder to dogs and pronouns, so as not to be responsible for the death of either group.