Quick! Get the number of that iceberg ... and the stupid duck, too!

Plan a more glorious 1995 by resolving to avoid the following horrors, as the wicked awesome new millennium looms:

* Researchlessness: Eastern Rainbow, Inc., brags about "the world of talent (in) our family of experts" in a four-color ad the printing company ran on two pages of a New England magazine for marketing communicators. One such family member is posted in "Bogota, Columbia." Pretty word, Columbia, except it is not the home of Bogota (note accent.) Columbia - fem. of Columbus - is the poetic personification of the United States; the capital of South Carolina; and the name of the 1,950-kilometer river in southeast British Columbia that gave the province its name. It is the C. in Washington, D.C.

The South American country is Colombia. Just ask Juan Valdez, who personifies Colombian (proper adj.) coffee in advertisements.

Beware non-native words. Confirm their spelling. When a Wall Street Journal writer said, "Hats with mesh veils are also de rigeur," she flubbed rigueur.

* Who's in Charge Here?: Try to keep things straight. A newspaper account opens with "After the passenger liner Titanic was struck by an iceberg in 1912 ...." The same paper told how "A Northwest Boeing 747 was struck by a bird at 900 feet ...."

I cannot envision that 'berg in hot pursuit of the ship any more than I can some duck ready to go one-on-one with one of Boeing's biggest. The ship hit the 'berg; the jet hit the bird. (For some reason these items call to mind an early 1940s schoolboy joke about a news bulletin from Tokyo: "A Japanese battleship has intercepted three American torpedoes and completely destroyed them.")

* The Look-alike Plague: IABC member Billie Jean Potter wrote to register her disagreement with the Newsweek writer who wrote, "(A mayor) shuttered the free dental clinic and staunched funding for ... shelters." The Boxford, Mass., writer observes, "My dictionary (American Heritage) only lists 'staunch' as an adjective ...."

Sometimes a dictionary is not the whole answer. Most that I own say that stanch and staunch are pretty much interchangeable, although some - American Heritage is one - take a position: "USAGE NOTE: Staunch is more common than stanch as the spelling of the adjective. Stanch is more common than staunch as the spelling of the verb." (AHD 3). Paul Martin's stylebook for The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual sing identical lyrics: "Stanch is a verb: He stanched the flow of blood. Staunch is an adjective: She is a staunch supporter of equality." This workstation favors the latter songsheets.

An illustration and design firm in Massachusetts takes a page in the brandnew PRSA membership roster (Boston chapter) to crow that it's "the perfect compliment to choice words." My complements to the copy chef. For the record, that which complements completes or brings to perfection. Complement - needed here - shares no meaning with compliment.

* Hooked on Homophonics: It takes unremitting vigilance to steer clear of the homophone traps: A local columnist says, "Lawyers are pouring through vouchers" - poring. Another asserts that "Harvard overseers have agreed in principal" - principle. ABC Wilma Mathews sends a tearsheet from Woman's Day on which is printed, "He wrote an enthusiastic forward for her 1990 guide." Foreword. A cutline notes, "Altogether, the Marathon has been won 37 times by runners from outside the U.S. and Canada." Altogether means entirely or completely: I am altogether delighted with the outcome. All together, needed in the cite above, means collectively. No spell-checker will tell us when we need cord versus chord ... hoard instead of horde ... disc instead of disk ... brakes over breaks. What does work is continual self-doubt and paranoia, every word-wonk's best pals.

* Mrs. Malaprop Redux: In a political campaign roundup last November, a newspaper writer said that U.S. senatorial candidate Mitt Romney's tactics had "(E.M.) Kennedy's campaign hackles flaring...." One's nostrils may flare, or widen, in anger or a response to oxygen deficit; one's hackles - now limited to the hairs on the back of one's neck - may rise or bristle in response to anger. When old Woofer's upset, the hairs on the back of his neck and along his spine become erect. The idiom is "He (or that) gets my hackles up."

* Comma-kaze Punctuation: A Washington Post story on Hubble's troubles explained how "The key (to understanding) was a pancake-shaped disk of hot gas spinning around, and being consumed, by something at the center." Looks o.k., but that second comma absolutely has to come after by.

A health department print ad warns that "Secondhand smoke kills 55,000 people annually in the U.S., that's three deaths every day...." And that string of words is a paradigmatic run-on sentence, or comma splice. It occurs when we place a comma between coordinate main clauses not connected by a conjunction. Either insert and before that's, or change the comma to a semicolon.

* That was millennium, remember: two l's and two n's.

Alden Wood, lecturer on editorial procedures at Simmons College, Boston, Mass., writes and lectures on language usage. He is a retired insurance industry vice president of advertising and public relations.