As experienced writers know all too well, their world abounds with goblins, elves, imps and boogeymen of high and low degree. They creep into subordinate clauses. They feed upon the most innocent phrases. And alas, they wind up in print.

Two or three years ago (the clipping isn’t dated), The Denver Post covered an ugly murder. “Sources said police will try to show that Watkins was in the back seat of the car and fired four shots from a revolver that had pulled alongside Adams as she drove her BMW along Charlotte Street.” The reporter did not say whether the revolver had an operator’s license.

The Wall Street Journal carried a profile on Sanjiv Sidhu, the phenomenally successful president of i2 Technologies. In 1996, during a sojourn in Maui, the gentleman developed a passion for surfing. “The following year he took private lessons with a world-renowned surfer who later featured a photo of the bearded executive riding the waves in a school pamphlet.” Ride that pamphlet! Way to go!

A police reporter in Indiana covered an improbable assault in Bloomington: “A 61-year-old man reportedly hit an Indiana University police officer who was directing traffic in the leg with the front quarter of his car and in the chest with the driver’s side mirror.” The driver was charged with driving through prepositional phrases.

A gremlin sneaked into a press release from Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Measures will be taken, she announced, to contain the spread of snakeheads. The snakehead is “a voracious fish with razor-sharp teeth that can walk on land.” Trick of the week.

Statistics have a way of confounding confusion. You may have missed this item from Raleigh: “For the last two years, a child in North Carolina has been murdered three times each month.”

Some of the gnomes that sleep in our computers have a fixation on death. The Associated Press covered the trial of a woman charged with killing her husband. “Edward Patton’s skull was crushed as he slept with a block of wood.” At least he wasn’t sleeping with another woman. In Florida the Lakeland Ledger offered a gloomy headline: “SARS May Be More Fatal Than Thought.” A columnist for the Saginaw (Mich.) News took a more pleasant view. The SARS virus is only “mildly fatal.”

Writers have to be on guard against dangles as well as mangles. Dangles come in both the second person and the third. A contributor to The Arizona Daily Star began his you-dangle by identifying the CIA as the nation’s principal spy agency. He continued: “I tell you this up front because, having taught at Pima Community College the last two years, you may be assured not everyone is clued in on this development.” Come now! Most of us have never taught at Pima at all.

The more familiar dangle appears in the third person: “Racing across the dimly lit park, his billfold fell from his coat.” The lesson here is that billfolds should walk, not run.

Regretfully, it has to be said that too many duh-mangles creep into print: “The Pentagon announced in August that retired Adm. John Poindexter will resign his position after a research project he was overseeing to establish a futures market that would have allowed traders to profit by correctly predicting assassinations and terrorist strikes he was overseeing was condemned by Congress.” Duh?

In Las Vegas a food columnist had kind words for Pop-Tarts. “These make a surprisingly decent breakfast, albeit a sweeter and less chewy one than round bagels with cream cheese you have to spread on yourself.”

In Columbus, Ohio, a woman was recovering in a hospital from total hip replacement. She was given a pamphlet of instructions for post-operative care: “You may progress to a cane as your confidence increases. Use your cane until you can walk without a limp in the opposite hand.” Amazing, what modern medicine can do!

Finally, a news item about Delta Airlines. It is retiring its L-10ll planes. How come? “Because the model requires three pilots, it is noisier than newer planes and less fuel efficient.” Might be less expensive just to shut up the pilots.

All you writers know this recurring sermon: Read your copy! Read your copy! And then get a friendly editor to read it once more.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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