Many of us have come to equate the word "tabloid" with the trashy, sleazy, low class, scummy sensational papers you only read out of the corner of your eye while in line at the supermarket checkout queue.

The word -- in official professional newspaper terminology-- actually refers to the format whose pages measure about 11 inches by 12 1/2 inches, as opposed to the larger "broadsheet" format of most metro daily newspapers.

Yet the connotation of "tabloid" , especially when used in phrases like "tabloid news", has developed a somewhat grimy overtone.

When I sent an article to an editor of a fine, upstanding, valiant, decent, tabloid-format  publication, he expressed some alarm at my passing reference about "garbage printed in tabloid papers".

I quickly reassured him that I, in no way, ever had the slightest cognizant association of "his tabloid" with "those tabloids", especially since he seemed interested in my writing.

With immediacy verging on panic and the phrase "you just blew it" echoing over and over in my head, I explained that I was referring to tabloid -type content rather than tabloid -style format when I made the comment.

Possibly, I need to revise my terminology, because like some of you, I was thinking of garbage relative to trashy, sensational, whacky, incredible publications like the ones with headlines such as: "Prophetic message seen on Portuguese fish-drying rack" or, "Wife divorces 400 lb. spouse to marry 500 lb. lover" or "Decapitated head whispers murderer's name".

I could never make up stuff like that. My early training has been in writing for respectable PTA bulletins and Little League newsletters which rarely gave opportunities to write about whispering decapitated heads.

In fact, when something stupid happens in a Little League game, those reports always require careful, respectable, tactful recounting.

If little Jimmy Stumblemeyer (name changed to protect the innocent . . . me. Real name: Stumblemaster) falls over the base and tags his own teammate , after bouncing the ball, while facing in the wrong direction, you learn to report it as "a noble and valiant effort".

This type of writing--I mean using words like "noble" and "valiant" -- doesn't appear in those trashy tabloids

Besides, can you imagine getting a rejection slip from a sleazy scummy tabloid?

That would be disgraceful. I've been writing long enough to have a considerable file of rejection slips from some very prestigious, respectable and esteemed publications.

My rejection file, however, is titled "publications correspondence" since the last thing I want to see when I open my file drawer is the word "Rejections".

In the meantime I wanted to reassure the editor that I think his publication is a wonderful, decorous, civilized, and magnificent tabloid-format paper . . . and that he, himself, is a wonderful, discerning, decorous and magnificent editor.

In the  additional meantime, I have asked him to disregard that story I sent about the lecherous, polka-dotted space creature who's been slurping up electrical energy from the nation's power grid.