You get to a certain age, you have a certain number of diplomas handsomely framed, and you like to think you have life figured out--at least the easy parts, such as how to pronounce certain everyday words.

You don't say, "I went acrost the street." And you've even mastered that saucy French way of saying "croissant."

It pains me to be the sharer of bad news. Many of us have been butchering the pronunciation of numerous common words--and making fun of people for saying words incorrectly when, in fact, they weren't necessarily as wrong as we thought.

So I'm sorry, Martha Stewart, for ever doubting you. Go ahead and pronounce the "h" in herb. According to some reputable sources, including Encarta's own audio-enhanced dictionary, it's just fine to say it that way, even if you're neither fancy nor British. (Yes, other sources still say it's pompous, but I will get to that later.)

Here's the thing with pronunciation. The rules are squishy. What's right has changed over time. What's right can depend on where you live. And getting things wrong can make you sound either uneducated or hopelessly stuck-up.

So what is someone who doesn't want to sound like an idiot to do? There's always not talking. After all, there's that famous piece of wisdom, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, that says, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

That's not so practical, though. The better approach is to understand a little bit of the nature of pronunciation, and get a quick tour of commonly abused words. You don't necessarily have to change the way you say things, but at least you'll have something wholesome to talk about next time the subject of lingerie comes up. But more about that later.