LEND ME YOUR EAR: FOR READERS WHO CONTINUE TO SPURN OUR ADVICE

More than enough has been written in these columns about the use of possessives with gerunds, but if there is a talk-show host who knows of this construction, I have yet to make the discovery.

Not that the misuse is limited to talk-show anchors and their guests. Recent examples perpetrated by well-known newscasters and foreign correspondents include: 1. "They do not favor us supporting the Arab nations." 2. "This includes the possibility of you withdrawing from Kuwait?" 3. "The element of them (Japan, Germany) paying us, being mercenary, is definitely not true."

For the nth time, we repeat that pronouns followed by gerunds (verb forms ending in -ing, also known as present participles) are in the possessive case, not the objective. In sentence one, us should read our. In the second example, you should read your. In the third, them should be their, though that whole sentence is a linguistic disaster. The word "element" is a poor excuse for "possibility", and whether the speaker meant it's the Japanese and Germans, or we ourselves who are mercenary, is anyone's guess. Call CNN for the answer.

On a commercial advertising farm implements, the speaker implores prospective buyers to compare their machines to "everyone else." This indicates that people are machines. For clarity, the company should urge viewers to compare their machines with everyone else's. Again, we need to recognize the existence of the possessive.

Some time back, I read of a man who owned a company stock that paid him $6,000 a year. The reporter wrote that it paid $6,000 a year annually. Redundancies abound in speech and writing, and some offenders excuse their use on the need for emphasis, but to each his own. (Please, not their own.) Betsy Aaron, reporting from Moscow on the scarcity of paper, informed us that "There's very little paper on which to write on." One on would have been sufficient, but the better way would have been to omit "on which."

On a TV special featuring an educational conference, a teacher was heard to concede: "My partner here is a better teacher than me." Let us hope so. Surely she wouldn't have said, "My partner here is a better teacher than me is," but the verb is should have been understood. On the same program, a school board member declared: "Us men have to set examples for our children." Would he have said, "Us have to set examples for our children? I doubt it. No one objected to his ignoring the part women play in bringing up their children, but perhaps no extremists were present.

In the Post Office across the street, a gentleman asked a friend, "Will you help my wife and I celebrate our anniversary?" If you are a reader and recognize yourself as the happy man, leave your wife out of it long enough to consider whether you'd say, "Will you help I celebrate my anniversary with my wife?" Then put your wife back where she belongs, and try to extend the invitation grammatically.

Although there are rules governing the pronunciations of the articles a and the, we hear them confused regularly by well-known speakers as well as beginning readers. The general rule for a is UH unless an event or a person is important enough to merit special treatment, in which case we use the long a: AY. Recently, on CNN, Robert Krulwich referred to junk-bond crook Michael Milken as AY heroic salesman. Distinction granted, though we question the term "heroic." Still, UH would have been proper only if Milken had been a mere run-of-the-mill crook.

Beginning readers and their teachers use AY for UH regularly. To our distress, so do prominent speakers though dictionaries are definite in the cause of UH.

The use of THEE for the should also be reserved for events or individuals deserving special recognition, otherwise the proper pronunciation is THUH. In my view, Winston Churchill is THEE literate politician of the century. Whether President Bush will finish as a THEE or a THUH world leader, only the Lord knows and courageous historians dare predict.