It may be a sign of hubris to take on a seemingly insurmountable challenge, but maybe not. "A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?" Perhaps that's a trifle grand, as I'm merely proposing to correct a few misuses of the English language. Still, the task is surely quixotic; the well of error is apparently bottomless.

There are specific solecisms in current American speech and writing that I want to identify if for no other reason than to ease my élitist conscience. Pretentious, you say? Who, moi?

Permit me to offer a modest sampling of common usage errors that make me shudder every time I hear them.

The overwhelming majority of people who employ the word phenomena seem blissfully unaware that one observable occurrence must be referred to as a phenomenon. Similarly, there is such a thing as a singular version of the plural media, but you'd never know it from reading or watching the media. The use of medium is so rare as to be exotic —a s in "television is another medium undergoing significant changes" — verbal accuracy not being among them. Most of the other confusions between one and several of something are so embedded as to be a lost cause: bacterium/bacteria, criterion/criteria, stratum/strata, and so forth.

There is a difference between torturous and tortuous. The first refers to the infliction of torture; the second to something full of twists and turns.

Another problem arises when a word shifts its meaning with pronunciation. Our citizenry has taken to pronouncing "route" as "rowt" (rhymes with "stout"). This is wrong. A rout is a defeat accompanied by a disorderly retreat. A route is a specific line of travel and it's pronounced "root." Truly — even though the dictionary does show "rowt" as a secondary way to say the word. I regard this simply as grudging acceptance of popular sentiment. Thus does language evolve.

Another constant irritant is the absolute inability to distinguish the difference in meaning between incidence (how often something occurs) and incidents (several individual events). "The incidence of shark attack incidents has increased."

Trader Joe's used to have a sign at the fast check-out register: "12 items or less." The grammar police who shop at the Trader's got on the case, knowing since sixth grade that items that lend themselves to individual enumeration require the use of fewer. "Less" is used with singular nouns, such as items in bulk or abstractions which cannot easily be counted (like water or courage).

Spoken language opens up a huge maelstrom of terrible practices with respect to articulation. There was an article some years ago — in The New Yorker, I think — in which the author referred to the kind of lip-lazy speech that is commonly heard as "Slurvian." Here are just a few of the more egregious bits of received pronunciation I've heard sprinkled throughout American discourse:
dennil for dental
dennis for dentist
tess for test or tests
sculpsher for sculpture
terrists for terrorists

You get the idea. And I'm not even going to object to the near-extinction of -ing endings. Whether comin' or goin' you are marked as irredeemably snobbish if you add the sound of the final "g." Should you happen to be runnin' for political office, it would be fatal to do so.

A snooty little mispronunciation has recently worked its way into speech. It appears restricted to the female members of the community for some deep sociological reason. Words like "stew," "suitable" or "tune" are generally, and acceptably, pronounced as "stoo," "sootable" and "toon." However, some careful speakers, wishing to appear highly educated or at least culturally attuned, say them so that the long vowel rhymes with "cute" or "mute." The elegance that this acceptable variation imparts to their speech is appealing and the substitution is quickly adopted. The problem is that the shift is applied uncritically in places where it doesn't belong; for example, pronouncing "noon" as "newn." This is incorrect. I've even heard one radio host pronounce "two" as "tyou." Those who have fallen into this phonetic trap should be encouraged to climb out of it.

Let us conclude the sermon with my nomination for the most painful current example of misuse: "I could care less." When you say that, you're indicating that you already care strongly about something and so could care less if you were inclined to reduce your concern. I care a great deal about the English language and might, indeed, care less if my interest suddenly diminished. If you don't happen to share my obsession, I couldn't care less (which correctly conveys the dismissive intent of this odious and impudent expression).

Arnold Wolf is a retired industrial designer and a former president of JBL, the audio electronics company. He lives in Pacific Grove.