God help us when we write about religion. Few subjects come with as many associated pitfalls. Here is a small one.

It fell to my lot recently to instruct yet another copy editor on Rev./Reverend. The Associated Press, The New York Times and the Religion Newswriters Association all take the traditional approach: Reverend is an adjective, not a noun, so it is preceded by the when used as a title with a name: the Rev. Billy Graham.

As a colleague summarized the point recently on the Testy Copy Editors Web site (yes, dammit, we’re still testy): "According to this thinking, calling clergymen reverends is akin to referring to judges as honorables."

Of course, there are refinements. Reverend and the Rev. are not used with a surname. It’s not Reverend Graham or the Rev. Graham, but the Rev. Mr. Graham.

Now we all know that people use Reverend colloquially with the last names of clergy, typically because they don't know any better. And that usage may eventually become standard, through the prevalence of ignorance that does so much to influence the development of language.

If you were to question congregants closely, you would probably find them appallingly ill-informed about the tenets of their own denominations. Whether we should also adjust doctrine to conform to ignorance is a question I'll leave to the divinity schools.

Please don't let this impair your enjoyment of my esteemed colleague Gregory Kane’s references to Revvum Jackson and Revvum Sharpton or any other attempt to harness the demotic for effect.

The point here is that if you insist on using archaic forms of address in serious articles, you are responsible for getting them right.