Grammar Moses: The best advice ever given to me was to buy a dictionary

I was sifting through some old papers the other day and happened upon a letter my boss had written me after my summer internship with the then-weekly Herald newspapers in Lake County in 1983.

It was full of wonderful advice and encouragement.

It included this nugget, which likely came after another in support of short declarative sentences: "Work on your spelling. It needs it. If you don't have a dictionary, buy one."

You see, John, I DO listen to you. I now own at least eight dictionaries, and I use them regularly.

I don't remember being an awful speller back then, but I'm sure he wasn't exaggerating.

What I do know is that such a challenge emboldened me. And the advice still echoes after 34 years.

John is still my boss, and he still gives me advice every day, whether he knows it or not.

I only wish he'd also told me 34 years ago to "Get rich!"

One-offs revisited

Last week I introduced a new column feature I call the one-off: two words, differentiated by one letter, that often are misunderstood and misused. I asked you for examples.

• Michelle Holdway, our night news editor, suggested stationary/stationery.

This one is easy. Something that is "stationary" remains in place. "Stationery" is what you write on.

• Marian Taylor of East Dundee offered a pair of one-offs: hither and thither and your and you're (hey, I never ruled that punctuation is a disqualifier.)

While you often hear "hither and thither" in the same breath, they are antonyms. "Hither" means to or toward this place or on this side. "Thither" means toward that place or on the other side.

"Hither and thither" suggests chaos, a disorganized mess.

• If you're still getting "your" and "you're" wrong, I'm sending you to detention. Your punishment is having to read all 100-or-so columns I've written so far.

Marian calls your/you're the most annoying one-off.

"Your" suggests something belongs to or is associated with the person you are addressing.

"You're" is a contraction for "you are." The apostrophe ought to be a tip-off.

• I've never had a handle on the difference between "distrust" and "mistrust," so I checked a few resources.

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage opines that the two words are as close to synonyms as any two words can be, so choosing one over the other shouldn't be accompanied by any gnashing of teeth.

But word nerd Bryan A. Garner suggests a subtle difference:

"Distrustful implies suspicion or wariness based on an informed judgment," he writes, "whereas mistrustful suggests uncertainty or uneasiness."

Boy, I'm glad to have cleared that up.

Small victories

Thank you, Woodfield!

And thank you, Carolyn McClure of Schaumburg, who wrote recently to tell me about the Coke machines at the mall in Schaumburg with goofily redundant signs.

After I wrote about it and published a photo of one of the signs, Woodfield responded almost immediately.

Take a look at the before-and-after photos from Carolyn and you'll see they're spot on now.

Have a Coke, Carolyn, and a smile.

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.