I alternate between laughing and rage. The English teacher in me never dies, and I would love to go around with a huge can of "Wite-Out" (a brand misspelling) and fix up the spelling and punctuation on the signs in public places.

My prime complaint is with "Caesar" in the "Caesar Salad." I refuse to eat in restaurants that are serving such variations as "Ceasar," "Cessar," or even "Ceassear Sallad." (Yes, I've seen that!) I check the window menus before entering. If they can't spell, can they cook?

I went so far as to suggest to a diner owner that he had it wrong, but he replied that the fellow who did the signs was "hard to work with." When he had complained about "Texas Weeners" they had been turned into "Texas Winers." I saw that he had a point.

Once someone had decided that deli sandwiches were to be pluralized as "heros" how could I convince adolescents that a multiplicity of Supermen had to be "heroes" or they would be sandwiches?

Punctuation is another issue. My other knife to the soul comes from the misuse of the apostrophe. I do not know who invented it but he has probably had a painful time in Hades for the little mark he inflicted upon the English speaking world.

Very few people can control it. I know I tried to teach it to generations of students who got glazed eyes when I told them it was chiefly used as a sign of possession, but to remember that not a single possessive pronoun in English has an apostrophe. Hands would shoot up: "How about it's?" "No," I'd say, "that means it is." Deflated, they would tune me out from that moment on.

I refused to surrender and we would have a further lesson on the semicolon. "It is a weak period used primarily to join together two complete thoughts." I might as well have been speaking Mandarin Chinese.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw a subway sign about newspaper discards that reads: "Please put it in a trash can; that's the good news for everyone." A semicolon was being used correctly in a public place! I wanted to hire a brass band to celebrate.

My point? Grammatical carelessness is painful to those of us who know better and it costs money. Many of us remember the shuttle flight that was aborted at a cost of many millions of dollars because of an errant comma in the computer input. Wills have been tossed out of court when stray punctuation undid possible heirs.

What else do we throw aside because of difficulty or misuse? Do we say: "It doesn't matter much." The parallels are yours to draw. Are there other problems we might solve with a bit more attentiveness to rules that really do matter?

I might be making a last stand with my preference for public correctness in grammar and spelling. If so, do put on my tombstone: "She tried; she did not succeed." (And that semicolon is used correctly. I hope the engraver has it in his arsenal.)