LEND ME YOU EAR: COLLEGE WASN'T REALLY AT BOTTOM OF THE TOTAL POLE

Efforts to help preserve the English language as we know it have received another welcome lift from Reader's Digest. For years, readers have delighted in the feature "It Pays To Enrich Your Word Power."

The Digest has added another section, "The Verbal Edge," listing mistakes commonly made in spelling and usage. The editors highlight causes and cures. Radio and TV speakers, politicians, news writers, even educators could profit by the free lessons offered.

At a political rally we attended by airwaves, a disappointed Democrat deplored the Clintons' habit of "talking language" their supporters don't understand. In literate circles, speakers "talk" politics, but they "speak" language. As Shakespeare's Hamlet declared years ago, we must "speak the speech." No expert has ever advised anyone to "talk the speech."

In a review of Hillary Clinton's book about Whitewater, the reviewer stated that "a mysterious mystery" surrounded the delay in Mrs. Clinton's having discovered valuable data. Ever hear of a mystery that was not mysterious? A high-ranking personality recently affirmed that the circumstances "bared" looking into. Poor Hillary! In her efforts to appear circumspect, must she "bare" all? Her critic meant the circumstances "bore" looking into. The verb required was a bear of a different species.

From a TV commercial featuring a new cooking method, we heard that cooks and non-cooks were "very excited into this." With our luck as a cook, we would probably fall into the method and cook our figurative goose.

According to a Chicago news release, "A man got a parking ticket that had never been in Chicago." The ticket should have focused on the driver's destination. Had it paid attention, the ticket would have traveled with the man who had to pay the penalty.

On a TV documentary relating to flaws in government welfare, one member of the panel advised parents to "Risk your children from the current welfare system." How about rescuing the children instead? To rescue seems to pose less risk.

A TV sportscaster, defending an outstanding baseball player who had become physically impaired, condemned the coach who "stayed" him from the game. As a result, the team "was stayded" from winning. For alert readers who missed the broadcast, I did not make this up.

Nor this. From a radio report about a plane crash that killed all the passengers, we learned the pilot "slowded" down on the runway, but too late.

So what of this? An advertiser of a new machine that provides exercise without our moving a muscle has averred that the invention can be "conversed" into something else, depending on our needs. Was this a slip, does the speaker have a hearing problem, or is he the same man a debutante said she sent packing because "He just wanted to conversate with me"?

In a news item about an author who wrote a book describing his life in a casino, we read that the writer would be "signing autographs" the following weekend. Who "signs" autographs? The only time I ever signed one, I hadn't even written the book. It was dedicated to me, and the author had added a personal note to his printed dedication. For friends who asked me to sign the book, I wrote beneath the author's note, "Do not believe a word of this," and signed it with my monogram.

The president of an underfunded college, expressing his gratitude to generous contributors who prevented the demise of his beloved alma mater, explained over the air that the college had been "at the bottom of the total pole."

For the present, I too have reached the bottom of my total pole, but to be honest, I purposely allowed some of today's examples to remain unclear. The best way to learn to master spelling and usage is to consult dictionaries and read widely. When you have lived half as long as I have, you should have discovered the difference between talking and speaking, bear and bore, risk and rescue, stay and prevent, the past tense of slow, converse as oppose to convert, and how to spell and pronounce total and totem.

All this and more. As St. Matthew taught the world centuries ago, "Seek, and ye shall find."

Aileen Lorberg is a language columnist for the Southeast Missourian.