LEND ME YOUR EAR: OF SOUNDING BRASS, TINKLING SYLLABLES

Several years ago I wrote a column called "March to your drummer." It had nothing to do with a marching band; it was about putting words together with the help of sound.

Hard rock and heavy metal have deafened thousands of ears, but my hearing has been spared because I have no teenagers living with me. This gives me the courage to continue listening to myself before deciding how to phrase what I want to say, how to profit by what I've learned, and to share my findings with readers. Not that my ear is all that dependable, but years of practice have helped me recognize off-key usage. I'm seldom satisfied with what I write, but if a word or phrase sounds slightly off-key, I struggle with the sharps and flats until results no longer offend my ear.

I try to do the same for writers who ask for help. Following are examples gleaned from writers and speakers whose usage indicates they could do with a little tuning up, too.

On an open forum about Clintonomics, a lady in the audience complained, "Everything I hear have no basis." To me, "everything" denotes every single thing, not a number of things, so my ear voted for "has." Also, the impact of the sentence was negative, and in consequence, misleading. Had the lady said, "Nothing I hear has any basis," her meaning would have been clear at the start. Of course, she was speaking, not writing, and her mind was on mixed-up political rhetoric, not grammar or sentence structure.

"We gotta do compromise!" shouted the leader at the end of the session. His name was familiar to me, and I knew he held a post of importance to the president. To "do compromise" has no place in the vocabulary of a policy maker, nor does "gotta" win medals for our nation's representatives abroad. Don't vote for this one. Let him "do lunch" with his alleged peers -- or take up boxing, or sportscasting.

Recently, a senator was asked to resign because, in the words of our TV informant, he was "addicted with drugs." Literates say "addicted to," don't they? A movie star has announced that she is "desirous to" become a director. Desirous to? Idiomatically, she could "desire to become," but usage panels uniformly require that she be "desirous of." A small matter to some, but regular readers of this column know that I have an obsession about prepositions. My ear anticipates trouble with them.

My ear, I confess, sometimes requires re-tuning. Last Sunday, on Charles Kuralt's weekly show, I heard an interview with the actress who plays Marilyn in the new opera based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. "There's such truth to her, such simpleness to her," the interviewer said warmly. I was quick to fault "truth to" and "simpleness to." Character, I felt, comes from within; it isn't attached like an arm or a blue ribbon.

Repeating the words aloud, as I often do, I realized I had judged too quickly. "Truth to" and "simpleness to" sounded just right! Moreover, "simpleness", which I had questioned briefly, was preferable to "simplicity." I murmured an apology to the interviewer, and almost forgave the legendary actress for making the Met posthumously.

A well-known networker, introducing a cooking demonstration by a nationally-known chef, avers, "Instead of us learning how to cook, we buy ready-made dinners, or eat out." I've spent nearly a decade trying to clarity the use of gerunds with possessives. Let me reiterate that it's "our learning", "his learning", "your learning", "their learning." Anyone out there besides Ronald Reagan and Gary Rust who learned this from the first time around?

According to Time magazine, Sept. 20 issue, the rock group Nirvana defines their outpourings as "alternative rock." To quote a member of the group, "Loud, crunching rock-and-roll killed grunge."

Is "grunge" really dead? If so, praise the Lord and pass the collection plate. Please, no grunges. Just a small tuning fork for coaxing errant ears into hearing what's acceptable -- and for ensuring the demise of the grunge-bearers.