The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.

Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.

Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.

Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root; F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.

Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.