Come visit with Sister Sally, Hawk and Spenser; hone your Occam's razor and your ukulele.

Most writers are not averse to trusting their readers with an occasional polysyllable, A few days ago The Wall Street Journal slipped verisimilitude into a page 1 lead. For those who might have nodded during Sextuple Syllables 101, the v-word shakes out as "something that has the appearance of being true or real." Its adjectival sib is verisimilar. Given a reasonably supportive context, most readers will show up at the gate where you want them to be.

But once in a while the copy goddess will slip in a pop quiz. I happened on one such last week while reading Back Story, Robert B. Parker's new Spenser novel. Spenser has justified a course of action by saying, "Because I don't know what else to do."

Sidekick Hawk comes back, "That be your version of Occam's razor; I'll do it because I don't know what else to do."

"Oceam's razor?" queries Spenser.

"I read a lot," sez ever-laconic Hawk.

Did you recall William of Ockham (1285-1349)? He it was who devised Commentary on the Sentences, which contained his most memorable rule: "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity." Now usually spelled Occam's, the rule also goes by "the law of parsimony."

I was captivated by Parker's title, Back Story, a phrase that is absent from Merriam-Webster's 10th Collegiate and Webster's New World 4th, but appears in American Heritage IV and Encarta. AHDIV shows it as a closed compound and says it means "1. The experiences of a character or the circumstances of an event that occur before the action or narrative of a literary, cinematic, or dramatic work. 2. A prequel."

* Reading the Sally Fields cover story in February more, I screech-stopped in the second sentence as it described SF's threads: "Worn, gray Nike workout schmatas." OK, from Nike and gray and workout I comfortably infer sweats, but what is with schmatas? It lives in no local lexicon or library; I finally found a Yiddish web site that said schmatas means "rags" or "looks like rags." But I found no reader-friendly reason for calling up the exotic noun. I did at last find schmatte (American Heritage, Encarta)--a rag or worthless thing, but what's the point? Absent any convenient confirmation of meaning, how is the reader served by the heavy-handed insertion of schmatas? Pfui, sez I. Take a run back to page 67 of the Macmillan Paperbacks 1962 edition of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, rule 20: "Write in English." Resist cute.

* NBC electronic reporting has apprised me of the following newsly items:

1. "Mustard gas causes blisters and is less fatal than Sarin." (11 p.m. news) Is less fatal the network's answer to overkill?.

2. "(A woman) saved her four-year-old son from drowning to death...." (Radio newscast) Never mind, I really heard it ... you can check the tape....

3. "You may have to scrap (sic) up more coins for parking meters." (Evening telecaster) Scrap scrap; set scrape.

4. Will you make any adjustment to this April 4 headline in The Wall Street Journal: "The Ukelele Hall of Fame / And Other Tales of Pluck". A honey of a hed, marred and jarred by ear-spell. American Heritage IV displays "ukulele ... n. A small, four-stringed guitar popularized in Hawaii. [Hawaiian 'ukulele: 'uku, flea + lele jumping.]"

AHD appends this useful Regional Note: "The word ukulele is one of a small stock of Polynesian borrowings into American English. Other Hawaiian words now common in American English are aloha (a greeting or farewell) and luau (an outdoor picnic usually featuring a whole barbecued pig). Haole, a word common in Hawaii itself but not well known on the American mainland, is the Hawaiian word for a white person." I must note here that AHD includes the ukelele spelling together with ukulele. You make your call, of course, but flawless cognate ukulele, with its sparkling image of the player's fingers flying over the frets like a jumping flea, ought not be messed with.

Alden Wood, professor emeritus at Simmons College, Boston, USA, writes and lectures on language usage. He is a retired insurance industry vice president of advertising and public relations. His e-dress is [e-mail].