[is that a pillar in your cornerstone, or are you just happy to see me?]

SENTENCE: The NPT is today more important than ever. Since its inception, this treaty has served as the cornerstone of global security and peace in the nuclear field, based on the mutually reinforcing pillars of non-proliferation, disarmament and the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

WHERE: Draft statement on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

CORRECTION: The NPT is today more important than ever. Since its inception, this treaty has served as the cornerstone of global security and peace in the nuclear field.

Vital to the Treaty's integrity and viability is the delicate balance among the three pillars of the NPT: non-proliferation, disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

CRITIQUE: The problem with this sentence is a mixed metaphor: a cornerstone rests on the ground, in the corner, so it can't be balanced on three pillars.

Fixing this sentence was actually fiendishly difficult, and I'm not entirely happy with the results. Unfortunately, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is widely accepted as the cornerstone and as having three pillars.

Worse yet, it was about a paragraph down that disarmament and non-proliferation were described as balancing on the fulcrum of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. I was expecting them to start doing circus tricks by the end of the speech!

[seize the day rate, karl]

SENTENCE: Karl per dium

WHERE: Post-It note shown to me by a confused Korean colleague.

CORRECTION: Carpe diem.

CRITIQUE: I don't normally do Latin, but this sentence was just too funny to pass up.

[trod and true]

SENTENCE: It's Alive! Creature Trods From Grave to the Stage

WHERE: New York Times headline.

CORRECTION: None.

CRITIQUE: This headline, sent in by a reader, has a very odd word in it: trods. Isn't trod the past tense of tread? Isn't saying trods the grammatical equivalent of saying walkeds?

Well, yes and no.

It struck me as possible that trod might be not only the past tense of tread, but also an admittedly obscure present-tense verb in its own right. So I looked it up in the OED, and sure enough, it's in there, though labeled "Obs. or dial." What does it mean? "(U.S.) To pursue a path." Returning to the headline above, it would certainly make sense to say Creature Pursues a Path from Grave to Stage.

Even more germane, perhaps, is the most recent usage reference listed in the OED: a 1909 headline from the New York Observer, "Trodding to Self-Support," about church finances. Not only is trod a word, with a suitable meaning; it also has a pedigree in New York newspaper headlines.

I hope this won't be the last time a reader sends in a tip. There's a great deal of awkward English out there just waiting to be parsed, and I can't possibly find all of it myself. But no cheating: Engrish.com is officially off limits.