As soon as I was able to make sense of words I heard words or bits of dialogue in movies or on television that rang funny. “Do people really talk like that?” I wondered. They generally don’t, I decided.

These words and phrases still bring a halt to my enjoyment of a show. “What was the writer thinking?” I wonder, after which I purse my lips and scowl through the next reel or until the next commercial.

And while I have rarely, if ever, found myself on a cattle roundup, in a Dodge City shootout or aboard a B-17 over Germany*, I still believe that certain words and phrases are or were simply not ever said.

I have made it a point in life not to say these verbal sillinesses but decided to make a public pledge to that end.

You will never hear me:

• Call a clergyman “padre.”
• Refer to dusk or dawn as “sundown” or “sunup.”
• Address a physician as “Doc.”

There are more but this is getting me worked up, and not in a good way, so I’ll leave the list there for now.

*I specify that I was never in a B-17 over Germany. As for the Pacific Theater, that’s a whole ‘nother story.