LEND ME YOUR EAR: THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

In this column we take a cursory look at the longest and perhaps the shortest of recently-published books devoted to language. The new Random House Webster's College Dictionary has been "bugled" by its perpetrators as the newest, biggest, and best college dictionary to date. Few critics consider it the best. Au contraire.

Referred to as Definition of Dictionary, whatever that means, the volume contains 180,000 entries. Time magazine's reviewer, Jesse Birnbaum, deems it "gender-neutral and politically correct and at an English lover's disappointment." Mark Russell held his audience captive last week when he displayed posters bearing samples of newly-coined efforts designed to eliminate sexism in language.

O diversity! O consistency! A woman is no longer a woman in this production: she's a WOMYN. Erasing the man renders it gender neutral? Oddly, mankind has been changed to humankind. Why not womynkind? Or as our friend John Bierk might offer ironically, why not personkind?

Granted that an enormous amount of toil and research have gone into the project, and many fine minds contributed, how could they have come up with HERSTORY for history? As we learned from the Birnbaum review, the his in history has nothing to do with gender: it comes from the Greek histor, meaning learned, full of knowledge. And how many tin ears did it take to come to terms with WAITRON for waiter, HEIGHTISM for discrimination against short people, WEIGHTISM to remove the stigma from fatpersons?

"Such permissiveness," writes Birnbaum, "can only invite further tattering of the language and already has." Still, she finishes, our beautiful language continues to grow through constant pruning is essential: "the Random House version of Webster could do with some pruning or maybe a repairperson."

The shortest recent book on language may be William Safire's delightful FUMBLERULES, now out in paperback. Our Quality Paperback copy consists of 153 undersized pages, with plenty of welcome space for adding notes. The author and distinguished columnist for the Sunday New York Times exposes the flaws in 50 once-incontrovertible rules of grammar and usage. Few readers will need Safire's permission to split infinitives or end a sentence with a preposition, but Safire refreshes our memories with amusing examples, and holds forth lightly but firmly on other rules many writers seem to have forgotten if they ever knew. Anyone ever tell you not to use contractions in formal writing? Explain why statements are better expressed in the positive than the negative? Expound on the best way to handle verb modifiers?

Then there is the problem of linking verbs. How many times have we implored readers not to "feel badly," because "feel" is a linking verb? Safire helps others feel goodly about not feeling badly any more.

In his chapter "Don't verb nouns," the author quotes an example apt to garner the rhubarb award of the year. A senator asked a secretary of state, "Will you burden-share?" The president's man replied that he'd have to "caveat" his response, whereupon Safire pronounced their aborted dialogue "verbification low-pointed."

I admit I was disappointed to learn Safire still considers sentences beginning with "it" boring. Readers have probably forgotten he once took me to task about this. Soon after, a pen pal consoled me with: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Thinking I'd won, I dropped the matter instead of sending the famous Dickens quotation on to Safire.

But we all have our special irks and peeves, and word maven Safire and I appear to harbor a vast number of the same. I was immensely cheered to discover he has nothing against the passive voice. I once wrote a column in defense of the passive, and was glad I had no computer to advise me to go active. James Kilpatrick wasn't so lucky. Fortunately, his masterly style preserved the passive for him.

Although Safire's mini-textbook is neither gender-neutral nor politically correct, I recommend it for anyone who yearns to write the Great American Novel, needs to impress a rich uncle, or can't resist writing letters to editors or those loonies in Washington. I wish I could say half as much for the new Random House Webster's College Dictionary.