Plain white envelope, neatly printed address, recognizable postmark: I can usually guess what’s inside.

Once upon a time a newspaper editor might have feared anthrax.

Now I know better; that anonymous letter is usually a complaint about something we’ve published.

More often than not, the complaints about the content of our coverage happen in strongly worded phone conversations, or in more public venues such as government meetings.

But the anonymous letters almost always contain newspaper clippings, marked with red pen to point out our grammatical mistakes, spelling errors or style gaffes.

I have a secret for those of you who send such anonymous notes: I know you, because I am you, the closeted &045; or maybe not so closeted &045; grammarian who seeks to rid the world of such ills as apostrophe abuse and non-agreement of subjects and verbs.

As a seventh-grader, I was so enamored of diagramming sentences so I looked for excuses to do extra homework.

I believe the world will be a better place when all TV news reporters learn that the word is &8220;supposedly,&8221; not &8220;supposably&8221; or &8220;supposively.&8221;

I can still hear my fourth-grade teacher’s disappointed sigh every time someone begins a sentence with, &8220;The reason is because Š&8221; (Her tool to remember the redundancy was &8220;You’ve already said, this be the cause!&8221;

My husband and I mentally catalogue restaurant menus that advertise &8220;drink’s&8221; instead of &8220;drinks.&8221;

And I died a little inside when I realized that the first chapter of the new Harry Potter book contains a ridiculously common homonym mistake, one millions of children might read and believe to be true.

I have known the mixed emotions that come from editing in my head while reading a newspaper or watching television &045; smug satisfaction that I know better and shame that others do not.

But as much as I want to make the world a friendly place for the subjunctive mood, I am sometimes guilty of misusing it.

No newspaper is perfect; we all make errors of judgment, errors of fact and errors of style.

Errors of judgment or fact cut me to the quick as a journalist; they have no excuse, and they make it all the more difficult to earn the public’s trust.

But for the girl whose mother raised her to cringe at the phrase &8220;very unique,&8221; those violations of grammar or style are a betrayal of my inner grammarian, a black mark upon my membership in a club growing sadly more exclusive every day.

(A note, though, to those of you anonymous letter writers who like to complain that we publish too many photos of white people or too many photos of black people: I feel no kinship to anyone who cannot see beyond the color of a person’s skin, so your letters are probably addressed to the wrong person.)

Keep those marked-up newspapers coming, though. They keep me on my toes.

Kerry Whipple

Bean is editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3541 or by email at kerry.bean @natchezdemocrat. com. Grammar mistakes can be mailed to The Natchez Democrat, P.O. Box 1447, Natchez, MS 39120, in care of Bean.