Part of the fun of writing, as every experienced writer will attest, lies in reaching for the one word – the only word – that perfectly expresses a writer’s thought. To quote Mr. Browning, our reach often will exceed our grasp, but we ought constantly to make the effort.

Our unoriginal thought for the day is that words do not exist in a desert-island isolation. They dwell in a penumbra of associations, derivations, familiar applications.

For example, take the New York Yankees. (Somebody, please take the New York Yankees!) Are they presently, currently or simply now leading the American League East? The trouble with “presently” is that it means not only “at present” but also “pretty soon.” When the receptionist says the doctor is presently with a patient but will be with you presently, we have a muddle. The Baltimore Orioles are in the muddle of their division.

The trouble with “currently” is that it suggests the first-place Yankees may not be there long. (This is a suggestion based more in hope than in conviction.) The word we probably want is simply “now.” The unadorned adverb carries no extra weights in its saddle. It echoes no overtones; it offers no tints or shades. With “now,” we have no penumbra today.

Consider President Bush. At least six books have been devoted to his syntactical gumbo. In signing a bill for defense spending, he spoke with cloudy clarity: “Our enemies,” he said, “never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” It figures.

The question is: Does Mr. Bush have a propensity, a proclivity, a tendency, a penchant, an inclination or a bad habit of falling into these things? Which is the mot juste?

A propensity? This is a “natural preference” for something, but the noun doesn’t work for Mr. Bush. A “proclivity” is the same thing. It doesn’t work either. How about a “tendency”? Hmmm. A tendency is a proneness, “sometimes amounting to an impelling force, toward a particular kind of thought or action.” How about a “penchant”? A penchant is a strong and continued predisposition to favor someone or something – a penchant for the Boston Red Sox, a penchant for a cold beer on a hot day.

What to say? One answer might lie in gentle sarcasm: Mr. Bush has a natural talent, or a real gift, for the smorgasbord approach to speech. When he ad-libs a response, he puts everything on the table – all the nouns, verbs and clauses – but they take some sorting out.

Aileen Zsenyuk in Las Vegas and Ben Kullerd in Bayfield, Colo., ask for a ruling on “preventive” and “preventative.” Both can function as nouns and adjectives. The main difference is that I don’t like “preventative.” It’s a swell-headed, obnoxious, pretentious, padded-bra word that costs $4.50 and isn’t worth it. “Preventive,” on the other hand, is a modest, unassuming, 50-cent word.

Herman Rogers of Seattle asks about “alternative.” Is it possible to have more than two alternatives? Sixty years ago many copy editors, to the Latin bred, insisted that “alter” implied only two. For an example, a checkerboard has alternate squares of red and black. Electricians cope with alternating current, mathematicians with alternate angles. The idea was that “alternatives” are in a limited class with “pair” or “couple” or “brace” or “twain.” No more. The Yankees’ manager, making a substitution, has a dozen alternatives – two dozen on Fridays.

A related question has to do with “couple.” IS the happy couple honeymooning in Hoboken? Or ARE the happy couple nuzzling in Newark? Fact is, they’d rather be in Philadelphia. Never mind. Almost always a plural verb works better with “couple.” It slides neatly around the problem of a neutral referent pronoun: If the couple is in Jersey, we have to ask if “it” is having a good time. It had better. New Jersey has been having more than its share of bad publicity lately.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.