Grammar Moses: Who snuck that word into my headline?

I gather Steve Bense of Wheaton never snuck a peek at his Christmas presents as a kid.

He might have sneaked a peek, but that's between him and his confessor.

"When I was young, we were instructed on the proper conjugation of 'sneak': It was sneak, sneaked, sneaked. Our grammar teacher would come down hard on the student who used 'snook' or 'snuck' in a sentence.

"Now we even see the word 'snuck' used in newspaper headlines! Apparently, as with other words, if it gets used often enough then society will (grudgingly) accept it. I'm sorry; not me."

Steve can rest assured he will never be haunted by his grammar teacher, but "snuck" is used almost half as often as "sneaked," according to Google's Ngram Viewer.

Take a look at dailyherald.com and search for "snuck." Regrettably, you'll find many cases in which we've used it in bylined, non-wire stories, despite the Associated Press Stylebook instructing us to avoid it.

As happens with language, "snuck" probably will become the dominant past tense in another couple decades as we old-schoolers die off.

Listen, the beauty of a free society is we're all free to live where we want on the scale of prescriptivism to descriptivism, and I readily admit I bounce all over that spectrum based largely on personal choice.

In casual conversation, I'm cool with "snuck," but there are some things I simply cannot abide.

Consider the word "drag."

In certain regions of the country - and even the state - the traditional past tense "dragged" has been replaced with "drug."

Eeeeeew. If I saw that in a Daily Herald headline, I might be inspired to commit violent acts upon the responsible party.

Tenets of tenancy

Angelo Polvere, the former mayor of Inverness, has a silver tongue.

He cites a photo caption in which the writer talks of a "long running" effort to "discredit the fundamental tenants of American government."

"The object of the writer may have meant those strict Constitutionalists who reside in Washington ... or did the scoundrel lazily use a word that sounded close to the word meaning "principle"?"

Yes, Angelo, the correct word would have been "tenets."

It's all me fault

There is nothing quite as awful as working up a fine joke and then bollixing up the punchline.

I've begun to think my occasional mea culpa has become the highlight of this column.

I surmise that from the glee with which Lynn Jensen of Arlington Heights and Chris Maier of Vernon Hills leapt upon me as hyenas would on an injured water buffalo.

"In the last sentence of the quoted section below, the correct word should be 'my' not 'me': 'hearing any nonsense my wife had to say about my being defensive and close-minded.'

"The sentence needs a possessive adjective (my) to modify the gerund phrase (being defensive and close-minded) serving as a noun - not the personal pronoun (me)," she said. "This is easy to see if you replace the gerund phrase that serves as a noun with a real noun, say 'book.' The sentence would read: ' ... my wife had to say about me book.'"

Well put, Lynn. And thank you, Chris, for piling on.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.