Notes & Asides.

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: This letter is a follow-up to my letters of Feb. 5 and Aug. 3, 2001, regarding your failure to use the possessive with gerunds. Since then I have found no such errors in NR-until the Jan. 28, 2002, issue, where I found two of them, both in your columns in "On the Right":

-"So we have to worry about the danger of Osama falling into British hands."

-"It was never the case of the night watchman being asleep when the thief walked in."

Please tell me that this was just a test to see if I was on my toes.

J. Peter Morris

Florence, Colo.

--Dear Mr. Morris: You being right, I will reform.

Cordially, WFB 

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: In The Oxford Book of Days for Jan. 9, it says (about the introduction of the income tax in Britain in 1799): "At that date one still spoke of 'the income tax,' in contrast to the modern 'income tax' constructed without the article as if it were a force of nature."

Don't you think we should bring that article back?

G. A. Redfern

New Brighton, Penn.

--Dear Mr. Redfern: Indeed. Though I can think of other relevant introductory terms.

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: Some time ago, on the question of "hanged" versus "hung," you offered the dubious example, "Frontier courts hung a lot of people without an extensive trial." I believe that sentence ought properly to read, "Frontier courts done hung lots of folks without hardly no trial a-tall."

John Robson 

Ottawa, Canada

--Dear Mr. Robson: We yield to your perfect ear.

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: While writing a college paper about the Shakespeare authorship controversy, I came across a debate on the subject in which you served as moderator. Would you be kind enough to inform me (and perhaps other interested readers) which side you favor on this subject?

Also, allow me to express my appreciation for your hard work on your column, National Review, Firing Line, Oakes novels, etc. I have enjoyed them all. In fact, NR was the main factor in my initial discovery of politics in general and conservatism in particular. Before discovering NR, I read the local newspaper and Time magazine, and I shudder to think what may have happened if I hadn't noticed your magazine on the library shelf and picked it up and read it. I've subscribed ever since.

Eric Christ

Sun City, Ariz.

Dear Mr. Christ: That's very cheerful news. In re Shakespeare, it has to have been he, because who else would go about using the divine name?

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: In reading The New Yorker, I have noticed a trend that I hope you can shed light on: Words such as "cooperation" and "coordinated" always appear with double dots or periods above the second "o," as if they were in German. What is this called? I recently received my degree in English. Please tell me this is an unusual practice, and that I didn't waste $100,000 on a degree that gave me no knowledge of this usage.

John W. Kovalsky

Fords, N.J.

--Dear Mr. Kovalsky: Here's how Lazarus/MacLeish/Smith handle the point in Modern English: "dieresis: A mark placed over the second of two successive vowels to indicate that it is to be sounded separately. It has fallen from favor in American orthography, its function having been assumed by the hyphen." In such a word as "naive" it serves a purpose, indicating that two syllables are to be pronounced; but "cooperate" has given way to "co-operate" or "cooperate." It is sometimes used in poetry to mark a sounded syllable that wouldn't be sounded in normal speech.

Cordially,

-WFB