such an individual will invariably defend their usage especially whem I Doug Rosbury on December 3, 2008 6:41 pm I have run into conflict with certain indiviuals whos english usage creates confusion and resistance for me, the reader. they will invariably defend their usage and obfuscate the critical importance of correct usage. This points up a problem with those from another country who may wish to feel that they belong in the american society. What's my point ? A pressing need for education. Well anyway, so it is. -- -- -Doug Rosbury Brandon on December 3, 2008 7:57 pm At least two handfuls of words listed in the author's pronunciation corrections are not putatively incorrect. Neither are they just American pronunciations; I glanced at dictionary.com, which includes the American Heritage dictionary, to verify this. Although certain of the variant pronunciations don't reflect the spelling of the word, if they are common in educated speech, they are considered acceptable. For instance, glancing at dictionary.com on each of these, one finds: [ar-tik] for 'arctic' is okay [dee-is],[dey-is],[dahy-is],and [deys] for 'dais' are all okay depending on whether you're Brit or American [kloz] for 'clothes' is okay [feb-yoo-ary] for 'February' is okay [hol-uh-ween] for 'Halloween' is okay [il-uh-noiz] for 'Illinois' is okay [med-ee-vuhl] or [mid-ee-vuhl] for 'medieval' is certainly okay! [min-uh-cher] for 'miniature' is okay [nich] for 'niche' is okay 'preventive' and 'preventative' are both words and they are synonymous Also, the [barb] in 'barbwire' could easily be heard as [bob]. Barbwire is a