A Word Please

June Casagrande I'm brilliant at making predictions. My distinguished body of work includes such forecasts as: Shares of Advanced Cellular Technologies will skyrocket, microwave ovens will be proven to cause cancer, hip hop music is just a passing fad, no woman will ever want to wear thong underwear, and "The Simpsons Movie" will flop and be the death knell of the TV series.

The outcomes went like this: Advanced Cellular made headlines for pioneering an innovative way to pursue stem cell research without destroying embryonic cells -- right before plummeting about 90% per share. Microwaves are in every home. Hip hop music throbs at every red light. Half the women in America are walking around with voluntary wedgies. And "The Simpsons Movie" pulled down $74 million within days of release and would eventually total more than $235 million worldwide.

So as you can see, I am indeed brilliant at making predictions -- brilliantly bad.

That's why you can forgive me for waiting so long to jump on the blogging bandwagon. My initial prediction that nobody wants to read John Q. Public's ruminations on gas prices and Donald Trump's hair didn't pan out. So it took me a while to get on the blog train.

But eventually I jumped on board. Now I can see the perks. Sure, I have yet to earn enough for a latte and a scone (both of which I predicted would be long gone by 2002), but at least I don't have to fulfill a minimum word count as if I were writing for the newspaper. As such, I can post little observations, lessons and tidbits as I think of them, and not have to worry about whether readers will stand for a transparently contrived premise about my predictive abilities or an inorganic transition to a grammar topic.

Here are just some of the tidbits this format has allowed me to pass on at my blog (www.ConjugateVisits.blogspo t.com).

"Reign in" and "give free reign" are common mistakes of people who mean to write "rein in" and "give free rein." Both expressions refer to a horse's reins. To rein someone in means to get him or her under control, similar to pulling on a horse's reins. To give free rein means to let someone run wild. In both cases, you could insert the word "reign" instead, if that's truly what you meant. But, 99 times out of 100, the one with the G is an error.

Another tidbit that came up in the blogosphere lately has come up in this column multiple times. But apparently some people still haven't gotten the memo. So here it is again: There is no rule prohibiting the so-called split infinitive. Indeed, a lot of experts say that the "to" isn't even really part of the infinitive, so a term like "to go" isn't a single unit and therefore can't be split if you stick a word like "boldly" in the middle.

Here are just some experts I cited.

"Although from about 1850 to 1925 many grammarians stated otherwise, it is

now widely acknowledged that adverbs sometimes justifiably separate the 'to' from the principal verb." -- "Chicago Manual of Style"

"No absolute taboo should be placed on the use of simple adverbs between the particle 'to' and the verbal part of th e infinitive." --"Fowler's Modern English Usage"

"Some infinitives seem to improve on being split, just as a stick of round

stovewood does. 'I cannot bring myself to really like the fellow.'" --The Elements of Style

There are more. Lots more. But unlike the blogosphere, your newspaper has limited space. That's why I predict newspapers will go the way of the dinosaur. Let's just hope this is as accurate as my predictions about Splenda and President Giuliani.

-- June Casagrande is author of "Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs -- Even If You're Right." She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.