Last Words on <i> Important </i> Subject: A Matter of Choice

My corps of volunteer word watchers has been especially vocal recently, but I’m afraid I have left most of their complaints and queries unanswered.

Mostly, I respond only when they find fault with my own grammar, diction or syntax, in which cases I make a valiant and sometimes spurious defense.

Recently, for example, Alfred L. Ginepra Jr. complained that I often misuse i.e. for e.g. , or vice versa. I denied that I had ever made that error, and chided Ginepra for not giving an example.

He sent an example in a second letter: “The question is why are we justified in taking the name of two continents when most other countries indigenous to those continents have adopted names of local historical significance, i.e., the United States of Mexico, the United States of Brazil?”

Guilty. I should have said e.g., which means “for example,” rather than i.e., which means “that is.”

It is not so easy to resolve a point made by Richard Sommerville. “I say the phrase any more is used wrongly in too many instances whereas any longer should be the proper one.

“To me more suggests amount and longer connotes time. ‘I no longer smoke’ means ‘I don’t smoke any longer.’ ‘I don’t smoke any more’ could mean I don’t smoke any more than I used to.”

Sommerville says he has consulted Fowler, Evans and Bernstein and they do not deal with the question. “Perhaps to them and most others there is no problem. Perhaps I’m the only one with this problem.”

Right. If I were Sommerville I wouldn’t worry about it any more. Or any longer, either. In any case, he is well advised to give up smoking.

Another easy one comes from Charles Thomas Newton, who underlines the word debuted in a Times caption and asks: “How is this word pronounced? Is a word a word if it can’t be pronounced?”

Easy. Debut is pronounced day-bue ; debuted is pronounced day-bued. The t remains silent.

More controversial is a complaint from Stanley R. Weitz, who is inordinately exercised, it seems to me, by the phrase more importantly.

“As a graduate of UCLA with an English major,” he says, “I am being driven mad by the continued use of more important in place of more importantly (as shown in the attached items clipped from The Times in the last three days).”

The clippings indeed show the use of more important , as in “More important, officials believe that. . . . “

While some writers favor more importantly , most favor more important. In the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage, nine out of 11 panel members queried chose more important.

In “I Stand Corrected” William Safire devotes two pages to the question, writing: “A great many readers take umbrage--indeed, have become umbrage mainliners--at sentences that begin ‘More importantly . . . ‘ They point out that the phrase is a shortening of ‘What is more important’ and that the addition of the ly turns the adjective into an adverb and is incorrect; as several complainants put it, ‘Wrong wrong wrong!’ ”

Safire says the American Heritage Dictionary notes that most grammarians prescribe more important , but tolerantly cites more importantly as an acceptable alternative.

He quotes a Prof. John Algeo of the University of Georgia on the merits of both usages. The professor concludes: “Anyone who thinks anything of importance depends on the choice is a fool.”

Safire himself concludes “I am inclined to wish the importantly haters well as they defend their burning, crumbling ramparts. . . . More important is my preference, but if more importantly turns you on, go ahead and use it.”

My own preference is more important --even if it makes Stanley Weitz stark staring mad.

Recently I used the word innumerate , meaning a person who is inept at numbers (meaning me). My copy editor advised me the word was not in Webster’s New World, our desk dictionary at The Times. But I used it anyway, pointing out that if there is such a thing as innumeracy, then there must be innumerates. I said I hoped that in future dictionaries I would be cited as the first to use it.

J. O. Skip Robinson of South Pasadena informs me that the word is defined in the Random House Dictionary as “an innumerate person.” Michael C. Grey of San Diego reports that the word also appears in the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), which notes that it appeared in the Daily Telegraph on Feb. 1, 1971. Richard K. Burch of Santa Barbara underlines the word in an essay from the Mensa Bulletin.

John Cornell nominates for oblivion the phrase “for the second time in as many days,” when what is meant is “the second time in two days.”

I agree. It’s driving me mad.