Oh, blimey. I should know better by now. Poke fun at the President,

confound the Congress, scoff at SCOTUS, and all that comes in is a tired

trickle of emails. Make some pronouncement about grammar, usage, or

pronunciation, and the floodgates open.

I’ll admit I am out on a limb here. My position on things like the plural

of “maximum” is strongly anglocentric. If we have accepted a word into our

language, I say we are entitled to do what we like with it, including

forming its inflections in the regular English style. If we have not yet

accepted it into our language, or are in doubt on the matter, we should

print it in italics.

But then, I still call Ligorno “Leghorn.” I’m a **conservative**, for

crying out loud. Doctor Johnson referred to the King of France as “Lewis,”

and I am with Johnson on this, and indeed on everything.

[I am not even as conservative as a friend of mine, a Kennedy-hater who

still calls New York’s main airport “Idlewild.”]