An Honest Mistake
A Grammatical Moment
Up and down. Happy and sad. Angry and not angry.
I suppose there’s a better word than not angry, but right now? That’s all I could come up with. I suppose you could say calm, but that doesn’t feel right. There are a bazillion words to indicate anger, but most of the ones that mean not angry have the word not in them. Imperturbable came up as not angry in Google, but it sounds too much like impermeable for me to be comfortable using it. It just doesn’t feel right.
I am within a hair’s breadth of finishing up our 2023 finances. I just need to pull some reports and then answer the 23-page questionnaire from our tax lady. I’ve got the one we answered in 2022 so, at least I’ve got something I can look at. Not much changed between then and now except there is less money and more debt.
Not especially surprising.
Now that I’m getting used to what my computer has morphed into after the disastrous Norton explosion the other night I need to decide if I want the grammar checker to check with an eye toward formal writing, professional writing or casual writing. I can’t remember what it was set on before the meltdown, so I now have the opportunity to pick something now.
I don’t swear much, mostly. I am interested in spelling words correctly and observing grammatical rules. There is one, though, that I insist on using and that is to say, “an historical event”, I realize that historical does not start with a vowel and therefore does not take the word an in front of it. Technically, it is: a historical event. But it just rubs me the wrong way. It just does not sound right to me. The way I learned in English class was to use an in front of the word because historical is pronounced istorical. The h is silent. For the silent h you would say: an herb, an hour, or an honest response. For a pronounced h you would say: a hat, a hotel or a hovering helicopter.
Did they change the rules? Somewhere somebody did because lots of people will change that in my pieces here at Medium. I have to admit I do it deliberately. Hey, I’m an old lady and I can do what I want. So there.
Oh, now this is interesting. I changed the settings for this piece from formal writing where I had earned a 60% grade for this, that I set before you, to an 83% for formal writing, to an 87% with casual writing.
So, which is best? I guess you have to figure out who your audience is.
In the old days we didn’t have spell checkers and always had a handy-dandy dictionary nearby. That was part of the tools of a writer. Now, like I said, we’ve got spell checkers and, of course, there is always Google where you can sort of sound out what you’re trying to spell.
That’s happening to me more and more often of late. Words like coincidence or prosperity. Sometimes I misspell words so badly even the spellchecker’s guesses aren’t good enough. That’s when I turn to google and start spelling the word all the different ways I can and somewhere in the offerings for each word suggested something will be right. When I see it, it’s like I do a head slap and say, “Of course!”
I remember once; it had to have been 20 years ago or so when I could not, for the life of me spell the word so. So? Yes, I kept sounding it out and wondering what the SSSS sound was. I could get sew, but I knew it wasn’t right. Sough also came up, but that also did not seem right. It was a frightening moment for me. Finally, to my great relief, so came back. It makes me emotional thinking about it now. Such a simple word and how difficult it was that it eluded me for as long as it did. Seconds, yes, but it seemed like an eternity.
Now, sometimes a word escapes me completely. That’s sad when that happens. I have to consciously take a deep breath and calm myself. That’s when I wait for it and within seconds the forgotten word comes to me quietly. It doesn’t slam into my face, it’s just there. Maybe it was mountainous. Maybe it was justice. Someday I’ll need to say something to the doctor about it. I know it’s part of getting old and that’s sort of sad too.
Words are what make me happy and to become a stranger to them is upsetting; something I don’t want to talk about. But it’s a worry. You guys are my friends. I just decided to go with casual writing. I got a 96% on it from the spell checker.
Thanks for reading.