Citizen Fixits

People who make speeches are used to having their grammar corrected, by listeners who write in and tell them. Now these Citizen Fixits are being encouraged: a new radio program offers prizes for catching celebrities in grammatical slips. At present a menace no bigger than a man's hand, the program is strictly local, just a month old, already it draws 50-odd letters a week.

The show, on Manhattan's WNEW (2-2:15 p.m. Sunday), is presided over by a schoolteacher--bespectacled, balding Maxwell Nurnberg. He explains the origins of words, dramatizes the English language and its common mistreatment, and reports in relaxed English, the outstanding errors of the week. To listeners whose contributions he uses, he sends $5 and a copy of his popularized English textbook.* To the people who made the errors, he sends the textbook alone.

Teacher Nurnberg has sent copies of his book to Winston Churchill, Major George Fielding Eliot and George V. Denny Jr., moderator of Town Meeting of the Air. Speaking in Parliament, Churchill had said: "Everyone can have their opinion about that." Major Eliot had mentioned the possibility of "some climatic event--probably a full-scaled Allied offensive." Denny, trying to clear up an ambiguity, had carefully spelled out for a member of his audience the word "its"--with an apostrophe. Then he innocently added: "Young lady, note the importance of grammar."

*What's the Good Word? (Simon & Schuster; $2).

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