In “Fiddler on the Roof,” the poor but patriarchal Tevye muses upon pleasures beyond his reach. “If I were a rich man,” he sings. Today’s profoundly perplexing question is: Should the beloved Tevye have sung in an indicative key – that is, if he was a rich man?

My own answer is no, the subjunctive “were” is better, but on this issue you can get plenty of argument. There appears to be no ironclad rule on such “if” clauses. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage cites Lord Byron: “I wish H. was not quite so fat.” Jonathan Swift liked the indicative: “I wish my cold hand was in the warmest place about you.” So, too, with Robert Frost: “I wish it was Elinor and I seeing you.”

More current examples come from The Washington Post and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A sportswriter in the Post reported a year ago that baseball fans in Baltimore were whooping “as if the pennant was on the line.” (That was then; this is now.) The Review-Journal covered a woman’s trial for matricide: The defendant spoke of her slain mother “as if she was alive.”

At least as many examples could be cited of the subjunctive “were,” e.g., in The New York Times, “If the New York Stock Exchange were an ordinary company, its practices would be appalling enough.” A syndicated columnist said of candidate John Kerry, “If he were in Bush’s shoes he would not be so certain …” And about Ralph Nader, “Even if he were on 40 ballots, it would not affect the outcome.”

In his “Modern American Usage,” Bryan Garner identifies three familiar contexts in which the subjunctive mood survives: (1) conditions contrary to fact: If I were Britney Spears …; (2) suppositions: If I were to buy stock in Martha Stewart … ; and (3) wishes: I wish I were in Scotland, fishing tonight. The subjunctive hangs on, almost invisibly, in such constructions as “be that as it may” and “suffice it to say.” Otherwise, the subjunctive is in a dark blue funk – a kind of mood indigo.

Moving on to a more cosmic topic: What is the distinction between “wiggle” and “wriggle”? The question has perplexed philosophers since Salome danced the bunny-hop. It remains unresolved.

In April, The Seattle Times covered a baseball game between the Mariners and the Oakland Athletics. At one point the A’s loaded the bases, but the Mariners’ Ryan Franklin “wiggled out of the jam.” At about the same time, in the Post-Intelligencer, columnist Susan Payner was reflecting on “the way dangerous sex offenders have been wriggling through legal and bureaucratic holes.”

All right, you writers! Do pitchers wiggle and sex offenders wriggle? What’s the difference?

Lexicographers make a distinction that every writer should take to heart. To wriggle is more sinuous than to wiggle. The verb implies a twisting motion. In a familiar context, we wriggle out of a jam. We squirm. We writhe.

By contrast, a child may wiggle with delight. A restless pupil wiggles in her chair. The Oxford American Dictionary defines the derivative adjective “wiggly” as “having small irregular undulations.” A belly dancer is more likely to wriggle, i.e., to engage in large, regular and unbelievable undulations.

It remains to be said only that a wiggler is “the larva or pupa of a mosquito.” A wriggler is the same thing, only it grows up to speak French and sting through leather. Do be of good cheer. That’s a subjunctive!

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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