Matt is a self-described “SNOOT,” which he defined as a “really extreme usage fanatic, the sort of person whose idea of Sunday fun is to look for mistakes in Safire’s column’s prose itself.” He pours over Bryan A. Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage, a book, he says, that serves to confirm Matt’s “SNOOTitude while undercutting his tone.”  Matt denies being repeatedly and severely wedgied as a child.