Apostrophes and other problems

I seem to have mislaid my apostrophes. Oh, and I keep wanting to spell apostrophes as apostrophies.

As a child, my spelling was never very good, and whilst I tried hard to learn the rules surrounding grammar, apostrophes, and how to write speech using quotes, my execution was never very good. I could write a good story, but I couldn’t quite master the execution properly.

As an adult, this perhaps shows a little less. I still have problems with the spelling of some words, especially regarding which spelling to use where words have different spellings depending on context and meaning – like bear and bare for instance. Bear with me and I’ll bare all. Or is that bare with me and I’ll bear all. No. That’s very wrong. Spell checkers, of course have taken away many of the common mistakes I make in spelling, and for that I’m very grateful (or is that greatful, or even greatfull).

And that brings another slight issue. In looking right now at my choices above for how, um, happy I am for the existence of spell checkers, I suddenly can’t see a word that looks right at all. Usually, I can see from the way a word looks whether it is spelled (or is that spelt?) right or not. But sometimes, if I look too much, the word suddenly looks very alien and wrong – the pattern I’m used to disappears, and I’m no longer sure that the word is right.

Apostrophes are a bug bear of mine. Where they are used to contract two words into one, I don’t (ha! there you go) have a problem at all. It’s (or should that be its? No – but I had to think hard about it – in that case it’s a contraction of it is, so it’s fine) the other uses where I get confused.

What about encoding spoken words into text using quotes? I’ve tried a number of times recently to to use this in blog posts, but my memory of where the commas are supposed to go is vague, and nothing quite seems to make sense. Sure – I could go and look it up, but I just want to get on and write and publish what’s in my head – I don’t want to break (brake? no) my train of thought  and re-learn how it works properly. Once I’ve written and published, of course, I never remember to go away and do the research…

Don’t even speak to me about getting the tense right when I write. I jump about all over the place, and simply don’t spot it most of the time. I hope you’ll forgive me.

Everyone learns these rules at school. Those who are smart remember them forever more and don’t have a problem with them. But I do – and I thought I was smart.

To me, it’s like I’ve forgotten the rules – unlearned them, if you will. Are they still there, tucked away in my brain somewhere, but not easily accessible?

I wouldn’t be surprised.

I’ve plenty of evidence that my brain contains huge amounts of information that I feel like I’ve forgotten. By way of example, a friend mentioned a band from the early nineties via twitter last week. Suddenly, I remembered them too. I remembered the title of one of their big songs, and some of the words. Off to YouTube I went, and quickly found the song. I found that as it played, I was able to fully sing along, remembering all the words, and indeed all the riffs and rhythms too, just as I was about to hear them. I couldn’t have done that  before the video started playing, but clearly a huge amount of data about all the intricate bits of the song was all safely filed away somewhere. A song, incidentally, that I most likely haven’t heard in well over ten years.

Long before Asperger’s came onto the horizon, I have often wondered about my memory versus those of my peers. They all seem to know so much more than I do. But appearances are deceptive, aren’t they? I suspect that they just have better access to their memories than I do. The music example above just goes to show that I really do remember things, often in great detail – I just then lose the link to access them unless the memory is regularly used.

I dare say that somewhere in my head , probably in the sub-basement, third door on the left, in the filing cabinet behind the sink are all the rules for where to use apostrophes, and where to put the commas when quoting speech.

I’ll be damned if I can find them right now though.

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