LEND ME YOUR EAR: STILL TRYING TO `MAKE FIXES' IN LANGUAGE

Although mistakes in usage seldom appear in Time magazine, the Dec. 24 issue carried an ad for People that proved a shocker. On page 8 we found a photograph of an elderly lady and a small child, along with the information that the lady, Gertrude Palmer, is 105 years old and Senior Adult of the Year. What she and the child had in common was school: both are students. Beneath the picture, in large bold type, was the heartwarming news that "We're these kind of people too."

"These kind"? Time was when English teachers hammered the distinction between "these kinds" and "this kind" into the heads of their charges from the early grades on. But as a Siemens commercial keeps reminding us, "That was then this is now." How many writers or speakers of today pay attention to constructions involving singulars and plurals? Certainly the ad writer for the most popular magazine in the country fell short in this regard.

In a TCI commercial, the confident announcer speaks of "learning from whomever is willing to teach us." I'm paying $17.95 for this sort of learning? I've thought of offering to explain how to use "who" and "whom" in exchange for free cable, at least until I've succeeded in teaching whoever is responsible for the wording. The pronoun whomever is not the object of the preposition from; it's the subject of the verb is, and should be whoever.

All subscribers to cable who take frequent advantage of the service have surely seen and heard the commercial for Citizens watches: "Citizens, Citizens, Citizens, Citizens, we've got elegance, Citizens!" Sorry, but we detect no elegance in "we've got" for "we have", though everyone from John Doe in America to the Royal Family of England commits this offense.

According to a CNN reporter whose name I fortunately failed to record, "Arson has became a major problem" somewhere I think L.A. But as readers of this column know, nothing has became anything anywhere. The third principal part of become is also become, used with has, have, had or would have. I'd send a copy of an earlier column (titled "Think, thank, thunk?") to the reporter if I knew how to reach him.

Some weeks ago, Ray Brady spoke of "banks lending money to you and I." Come now, Mr. Brady, you must know banks never lend money to I. Perhaps, if you asked them in proper English, they'd lend it to you and me.

From a radio speaker, I heard that "Poor Bush has made getting out of Kuwait his insistence." You can't "make insistence" without spoiling syntax. If you know how to make insistence without spoilage, please send me the recipe. I'll stir it up for the benefit of chronic offenders.

Sonya Friedman, on one of her everlasting talk-shows about male-female relationships, asked a female psychiatrist: "How do you know if a man is married in 30 seconds?" Presumably, she wanted to know how a woman can tell whether a man is married just by looking at him. But for a couple to get properly hitched in half a minute would set a record.

On Capital Ideas, a panelist spoke of the "advantages" as opposed to the "detractors" of whatever. "Advantages" are not human beings; "detractors" may be, though we sometimes entertain doubts. Our otherwise knowledgeable lady meant "detractions", better known as "disadvantages" and better stated as such.

An employee of NASA was said to be "working to make the fixes on the space shuttle." How do you make fixes? I could use that recipe too especially for improving syntax.

By now everyone who reads me knows how I feel about the use of "less" for "fewer." Once in a blue moon, I find a product labeled correctly in this regard, and LandOLakes has me lapping up their Lite Sour Cream because the container states: "One third fewer calories and two-thirds less fat." For this I can even overlook the poor spacing and missing punctuation in their trade name!