What was going on when I was born?

An article yesterday on the marriage of Roslyn Reiser to Paul Zimelman incorrectly identified the bridegroom's professional affiliation. He is a concert tenor known professional ly as Paul Zim and former ca ntor of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York.

Last year, every employee of the Scandinavian Airlines System was given a 50-page booklet with a bold red cover, printed in large type and illustrated with cartoons. At first glance, it looked like a comic book, or a perhaps a child's coloring book. But its intent was serious, and its message was somber. S.A.S., the international airline jointly owned by the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian Governments, was in big trouble: After 17 profitable years in a row, and despite continuing earnings from hotels and other sidelines, it had lost money two years running - $14.9 million in the fiscal year ended Sept.30, 1980, and $9.1 million last year. Jan Carlzon, the 40-year-old former tour operator who is the chief executive officer of S.A.S., and the president of S.A.S. Group, exhorted his employees on the booklet's cover, ''Let's get in there and fight.'' Inside, he said that the airline would not survive unless it learned to be more like the ''street fighters from the rough-and-tumble American domestic market such as Delta.''

Raising their hands hesitantly, fewer than a third of the seventh graders indicated they had ever heard of Eugene O'Neill when the two-hour class began at the O. Henry School in lower Manhattan. Before the class was over, all the pupils were enthusiastically acting out a shipboard near-riot based on ''Moon of the Caribbees,'' one of the playwright's rarely performed one-act plays. It was a theater-in-education workshop at the school - Intermediate School 70 at 333 West 17th Street - and theater people sat on the floor with 23 youngsters in Lillian Becker's creative writing classroom, where the furniture had been shoved to the sides. The day before, the professionals had worked with Mrs. Becker's other classes - 41 ninth graders and 32 sixth graders. ''Just by pushing the desks aside and sitting on the floor, it's not school anymore,'' she said, looking ready for a good time and noting that her students ''read a lot of plays in creative writing - it opens them up more than literature does.''

A listing yesterday of events for the James Joyce centenary gave an incorrect date for a reading by Irene Worth at the Muhlenberg branch of the New York Public Library. It took place last night.

Your Taxes A Guide to Preparing 1982 Returns Second of 12 articles. By DEBORAH RANKIN One of the first decisions someone must make when preparing a tax return is what filing status to claim. Filing status - one of those intimidating jargon terms coined by the Internal Revenue Service - usually, but not always, mirrors your marital status. It determines the rates at which your income will be taxed and the size of the zero bracket amount (formerly known as the standard deduction) you will be able to claim. There are four different categories of filing status: single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, and head of household.

Foreign companies must test Japan's new measures intended to eliminate import barriers before they know whether the Tokyo Government's actions do in fact open the Japanese market to their products. Even before that crucial test, two things about the market-opening program are evident. First, last week's lifting of 67 nontariff barriers by the Japanese Cabinet - most of them dealing with product safety requirements and quality control proced ures - will have little near-term effect on thebig trade surpluses that Japan is running wit h the United States and the European Economic Community. Second, if the program is judged to be a meaningful step in opening up Japan's economy to foreign products, the payoff for Japan - in terms of easing trade tensions - is likely to be greater in the United States than in Western Europe.

The assessed value of taxable property in New York City increased more than $2.5 billion last year, to $44.9 billion, according to tentative figures released yesterday by the Department of Finance. About 75 percent of that amount represents increases in Manhattan office property, but assessments also went up for over 105,000 oneand two-family homes, most of them in Queens. Based on the rise in total assessments and the estimated tax rates, the city expects to increase its revenues from real-estate taxes by about $190 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1. Assuming that the city maintains its record of collecting about 97 percent of the taxes it levies, the tax will bring in about $3.87 billion, officials said, meaning it would remain the city's largest single source of revenue.

Citibank raised its prime lending rate by three-quarters of a point, to 16 1/2 percent, reversing a downward trend that began last July. It cited the rising interest rates it is paying for its own funds. Except for Crocker National in San Francisco, most major banks refrained from following Citibank's lead, partly from concern that increasing rates would be too heavy a burden for some of their customers and partly from concern that the the Reagan Administration would be critical. Senior managements of major banks were said to be divided on the issue of how to deal with rising interest rates. (Page A1.) The stock market fell precipitously amid worry over rising interest rates. The Dow Jones industrial average was off 19.41 points, closing at 851.69. The decline, the biggest since Aug. 14, came after a week of gains based largely on hopes that interest rates would drop. (D1.)

LEO MILLER has published more than 30 articles on the poet John Milton and tracked down manuscripts relevant to Milton studies that had gone unexamined for nearly 300 years. He is now completing a study of the poet's political writings that, according to Albert Labriola, secretary of the Milton Society of America, will ''cause us to revise our understanding of Milton's life, at times significantly.'' By profession, however, the 66-year-old scholar is a businessman. Mr. Miller never sought a Ph.D. or any formal ties to a university, and he has pursued his scholarly interests primarily during evenings, weekends and vacations. ''It's part of my nature,'' he explains. ''Why does a mulberry worm spin silk or a bee gather honey?''

A toss of a coin was used by a New York City Criminal Court judge to determine the length of a prison sentence in a misdemeanor case. District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of Manhattan, who said yesterday that he knew of the sentencing shortly after it happened last Tuesday in Criminal Court in Manhattan, described the actions by the judge, Alan I. Friess, as ''ridiculous and outrageous.'' Judge Friess was censured last year by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct for releasing a woman charged with murder on her own recognizance and then inviting her to stay overnight in his home in Brooklyn. The woman had appeared before him in court in the early hours of Thanksgiving Day in 1980.

On the second floor of the low-slung world headquarters of the Emhart Corporation, the consolidation department fanned out behind mustard-colored partitions. Fluorescent tubes gleamed. Men and women huddled over Formica desks, wearing down pencils. The desks were laden with spread sheets and computer printouts, enough paper to start a mill. To judge by the zeal of those working on it, a project was going on that seemed to be on the order of a NASA moon mission. An Emhart functionary, in fact, calculated that some 120 Emhart units would have three people apiece assigned to it, working 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, for 12 straight weeks. Without even getting into the crunching work carried out by computers, by the legal staff, by messengers, by publicity hands, he came up with the fact that this project will consume 180 man-years of labor.

Despite the continuing slump in car and truck sales, the General Motors Corporation today reported a small profit of $97 million for the fourth quarter of 1981 and $333 million for the entire year - a profit it attributed largely to cost-cutting. G.M. is the only United States automobile manufacturer expected to report a profit for 1981. The nation's largest auto maker also announced a series of highlevel management changes, which were generally interpreted in the auto industry as an effort to move younger men into key positions. In the most important of these shifts, Robert C. Stemple, who is 48 years old, was named general manager of the Chevrolet division, the company's largest unit but one that has been experiencing sales and earnings difficulties. He succeeds Robert D. Lund, 61, who was transferred to the corporate staff in charge of sales and marketing.