For this syndicated columnist, the year began badly and went downhill from there. I goofed on New Year’s Day.

It was in a column discussing a case in Sacramento. A group of plaintiffs had sued the city under the Americans with Disabilities Act. They asked for extensive repairs to city sidewalks, where “benches, utility poles, signs, mailboxes and guide wires are familiar impediments.”

Guide wires? The ink had not dried on that column before I heard from Archie L. Dickson of Gulfport, Miss. He was abominably gentle. “I think a more proper term,” he wrote, “would be guy wires.”

What is one to say? Of course these were guy wires, though why such supporting ropes, cables or wires are “guy” wires and not “gal” wires I cannot say. The term dates from 1623, and evidently derives from the Dutch word for a brace or guide. The thing is, I knew the things were guys, not guides. It just came out wrong. As Horace said in one of his Epistles, “Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.” Even good old Homer nods.

In February I was lamenting the abuse of the adjective “infamous.” My lamentation rambled into a recollection of Franklin Roosevelt’s description of Pearl Harbor. In his address to Congress, I said that Roosevelt said the December day was “a date that will live in infamy.” Dean Smith of Cary, N.C., protested. “Roosevelt didn’t say ‘date that.’ No way! The correct version is ‘date which.”‘

Maybe so, but I’d like to hear the tape. Three reference sources – Bartlett’s, Oxford, and the Library of Congress – agree with Mr. Smith: a date “which” will live. On the other hand, the usually reliable Macmillan Dictionary of Quotations says “a date that will live.” If I erred, I will blame it on my irrational prejudice against “which.”

Late in February I was urging writers to expand their vocabularies. “It would be a dull world,” I said, “if writers were confined to the vocabulary of Jane and Bob and Spot the jumping dog.” The mutt didn’t belong to Jane and Bob. He belonged to Jane and Dick.

March was another bad month. I was writing about the verbs “lay” and “lie.” I cringe to confess that I said, “The verb ‘lay’ is declined straightforwardly.” Declined? How could I have nodded so badly? A dozen knowledgeable readers let me know at once that verbs are not declined, for Pete’s sake. Verbs are conjugated.

Among my instructors, I ruefully acknowledged, was Mayor Helen M. Berg of Corvallis, Wash. The next e-mail came from Mayor Berg herself. The city of Corvallis, she briskly reminded me, is not in Washington. It is in Oregon. Good old Homer had bad hair days.

A week after that debacle, I gloomily predicted that eventually the distinction between “lie” and “lay” will fade “as the smile on the face of the Cheshire cat.” For one of Alice’s most devoted fans, the error was especially egregious. Sid Sidlo of Raleigh, N.C., at once reminded me that I had it backward. It wasn’t the smile that faded, it was the cat, “quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail and ending with the grin …”

In July I denounced the run-on sentence, the kind of sentence that slogs along for 70 words and 10 subordinate clauses. I was especially hard on a book reviewer in The New York Times. He said of a book of essays by Martin Amis, “Some of his efforts to concoct broad generalities … feel pretentious and false.” I said professorially, “The subject was ‘efforts,’ the verb was ‘feel.’ Someone should have introduced them.” Twenty readers, as far apart as Oregon and Illinois, should have introduced me to elementary grammar. The subject was not “efforts,” the subject was “some.”

Early in August I quoted Andrew Jackson as ordering his artillerymen “to elevate them sites a little lower.” Gunners elevate sights, please, not sites. Toward the end of the month I addressed the subjunctive mode. It’s the subjunctive mood.

How many times have I exhorted writers to read their copy, read their copy, read their copy! Physician, heal thyself! And have a better New Year!

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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