A WORD, PLEASE:Dealing with a myriad of issues

I’m writing another grammar book. And my deadline is five days after the deadline for this column. Which means I’d rather talk about almost anything except grammar — like my theory about how the writers of “Lost” will make sense out of all those titillating tidbits that have kept us hooked for so long (they won’t), or my proposal to fix congestion on our nation’s freeways: Close them to everyone but Corolla-driving columnists (on second thought, maybe the streets aren’t big enough for me and Arianna Huffington).

But grammar duty calls. And luckily, there are a myriad of grammar issues so fresh in my mind that I can write this column without much research.

Take the phrase “a myriad of.” For a long time I thought that “myriad” doesn’t go with “of.” I’m not sure where I got this bit of misinformation, but it’s a popular one. “Myriad,” some say, is an adjective. You can use it to modify a noun, “I have myriad problems,” but you can’t use it as a noun, “I have a myriad of problems.” Luckily, my real problem — a reluctance to open a dictionary — was easily resolved.

“Webster’s New World College Dictionary” lists “myriad” as a noun first and as an adjective second. It means “an indefinitely large number,” among other things.

So both “myriad problems” and “a myriad of problems” are perfectly grammatical, even though style experts prefer the one without the “of.”

Another usage matter I botched for years has to do with “since” and “because.” On this one, I was just over-applying a style rule.

I used to think that “since” applied only to time periods, “I’ve been working on this thing since October,” and not to causes, “Since we’re here anyway, we might as well help ourselves to some dip.”

But that was a misunderstanding. And it’s not a limitation you have to worry about.

The strictest source on this matter is the Associated Press Stylebook, which says: “Use ‘because’ to denote a specific cause-effect relationship. ‘He went because he was told.’ ‘Since’ is acceptable in a causal sense when the first event in a sequence led logically to the second but was not its direct cause: ‘They went to the game, since they had been given the tickets.’”

But other usage guides and, most notably, the dictionary, all say that it’s fine to use “since” for pretty much any kind of causality you like.

Yes, “because” can be more precise when talking about cause. But it’s not your only option.

And it looks like we have time for one more little bit of information — one that can prove fun if you start listening for it. It’s the word “suspect.”

You know how newscasters are always saying things like, “The suspect robbed the liquor store” and “The suspect was seen fleeing the scene”? Well, in the strictest sense of the word — and in one that could potentially get them sued — that’s wrong.

A suspect, according to Webster’s, is a person suspected of something. Not necessarily the person who did it. If a guy with long red hair robs a liquor store then an hour later the police pick up a guy because he has long red hair, that second guy is a suspect.

That’s because he’s suspected of being the first guy. And the first guy, of course, is not a suspect, he’s a robber.

And if a reporter said, “The suspect brutally beat the clerk during the robbery,” then later it turns out that the police were holding the wrong guy — well, the reporter just slandered an innocent man.

Well, that’s all the random usage information we have time for today. Tune in next week for something more lucid (hopefully).