AS A WRITER I USE WORDS ALL THE TIME. In fact, even when I wasn't a writer I used words all the time. As a professor of journalism I was paid to correct the errors in the words of students who aspired to become journalists whose profession's role is, at least in part, to correct the errors of others. I'm still kind of in that habit.

So, my recommendation is that most people stop using the words irony, ironic and ironically. At the least, they should until they learn how to use them un-ironically.

I say this because the word irony and its derivatives are probably used incorrectly more often than they are used correctly. This even though it is an erudite term that you would think would only be used by the erudite.

And I'm not the only one who sees irony being contorted on a daily basis. The Urban Dictionary says that irony is "one of the most misused words in the entire English language." Irony is a subtle concept. Obviously most people don't get it.

What is irony? According to Wikipedia, "irony (from the ancient Greek eironeía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does, and what one means or what is generally understood. Irony is a mode of expression that calls attention to discrepancy between two levels of knowledge. In fiction, it is a demonstration of the distance between the character's knowledge and that of the audience."

Most current uses of the term irony merely reference odd coincidence or something simply unfortunate.

For example, nothing described in Alanis Morissette's hit song "Ironic," which is supposed about how ironic life is, is in fact ironic. Isn't that ironic? "A black fly in your Chardonnay" isn't ironic. As an example of irony, it is not ironic; it's moronic. Now here's some more irony. Irony Central (ironycentral.com) says "Any humor inadvertently contained in these pages is brought to you by the concept of irony. To us crazy kids, saying the opposite of what we really mean or think, i.e. irony, is funny." As one observer noted of this passage, "Ironically, that site's editor apparently believes you can achieve irony by merely stating the opposite of what you believe — even if you tell the reader that you are doing exactly that."

Further, from the http://www.answerbag.com, voted as the "best example" of irony was that the first video ever played on MTV was "Video killed the radio star." This is could be, maybe, mildly ironic. It is really mostly an un-coincidence since an MTV programmer made a deliberate decision to run that "ironic" video.

(Now if DJ Casey Kasem was killed in the filming of the "Video killed the radio star" video, now that would be ironic.) Another real-life example of actual irony, cited on http://www.answerbag.com, is this: "Online pop-ups offering to help you get rid of online pop-ups."

Journalist Jon Winokur gave this exhibit of irony in an article that ran in the Los Angeles Times Sunday, February 11, 2007, entitled "You call that irony?" A 2001 Father's Day tribute on ESPN featured "How Sweet It Is (to be Loved by You)," performed by Marvin Gaye, who was shot and killed by his father in 1984.

I suggest it would be ironic if the Center for Handicap Accessibility had no wheelchair ramp.

Another example of situational irony, from the website examples-help.org.uk, comes from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

But first, a Coleridge quiz: Finish this familiar quatrain: "Water, water, every where, / And all the boards did shrink; / Water, water, every where…" Think for a moment before you read further.

If you said, "And not a drop to drink," you, like 95% of the people to whom I have given this quiz, are wrong. (Only two people got it right, my mother, who is one of the smartest people I ever met, and someone else, whose name at this moment I cannot remember.) Anyway, the actual line from Coleridge is this: "Nor any drop to drink."

But, back to the task at hand, the situation of Coleridge's mariners is ironic because they are surrounded by water — but dying of thirst.

But irony isn't dead. In the New York Times Andy Newman in the article "Irony Is Dead. Again. Yeah, Right" notes that word irony has been steadily disappearing from New York daily newspapers for a decade. Between 2000 to 2008, appearances of the word "irony" and its cognates tumbled 56 percent.

But he notes: "The analysis may have its flaws. For one thing, the search algorithm also, ironically, picked up phrases like 'end of irony.' More significantly, no self- respecting ironist actually uses the word "ironic," except, perhaps, ironically."

Ironist Gary D. Gaddy, ironically, writes ironic columns every once in a while.

A version of this article appeared in the January 1, 2009 editon of the Chapel Hill Herald.

Copyright 2009 Gary D. Gaddy