If my apartment ever catches on fire, I'm grabbing my insurance papers, my wedding album and "Working with Words" by Brooks, Pinson and Gaddy Wilson.*

Everyone should own this book. And you'll have to buy your own because I simply cannot let you borrow mine. Some things are just too personal. My copy is highlighted and dog-eared in all the right places.

It is beautiful. It is perfect. It is the "I Ching" of grammar books.

I feel strongly about this subject. I am - it is true - a grammar geek. There is no hope for me. The disease is far too advanced.

(In my own defense, I don't correct the grammar of anyone I don't know well enough to say, "Hey, what do you think this weird rash on my back is?")

So you can only imagine my glee when my best friend, who is a professional copy editor and queen of the grammar geeks, e-mailed me to say that her local radio station was running a trivia question about a band named The The. (I did not make that up.) One of the clues to guessing the name of said band was that it used the most common word in the English language twice, which was also a preposition.

All grammarians are now cringing because they know that "the" is not a preposition but an article. Said friend was beside herself. A portion of her e-mail follows:

"Gaaah! Only trained grammar professionals should attempt giving clues based on parts of speech or punctuation or the proper use of 'whom.' These are delicate issues, people. Caution is important."

Is it any wonder I love this woman like a sister?

And, as it turned out, she was not alone in her horror. The radio station received enough complaints to correct themselves on the air. Grammar geeks unite!



* I know all the book titles should be italicized or underlined not put in quotes, but I still haven't gotten that function to work on this website. It's a technical failure not a punctuation one, I swear. Grammar geek, yes. Computer geek, not so much.