For most of my adult life, my relationship with spelling and grammar could best be described as... estranged. Or perhaps, more accurately, non-existent. I was the kind of person who saw a misplaced apostrophe and thought, "Eh, you get the gist." A comma splice? "It adds character!" And don't even get me started on 'their,' 'there,' and 'they're' – a linguistic Bermuda Triangle that I happily navigated with blissful ignorance.
To be fair, English is a ridiculous language. A chaotic, inconsistent, rule-breaking mess held together by duct tape and the sheer will of its users. Why are 'read' and 'lead' pronounced differently in the past tense, but spelled the same? Why do we have silent letters? Why is 'queue' not just 'Q'? It's a stupid language, I'll admit it, and my previous indifference felt less like apathy and more like a righteous rebellion against its inherent illogical nature.
Then came this Club Buff app. Six months ago, I started writing for this. Six months of daily engagement, crafting sentences, structuring paragraphs and submitting my thoughts into the digital ether -- only once they get approved by a team -- yes, a TEAM -- of editors at our parent company's Canadian office. (They're in the publishing and broadcasting business and were/are hesitant -- very hesitant -- to allow us Buff Boys to, like, write words, you know, like, in public.)
And slowly, subtly, something shifted. It wasn't an overnight revelation, more like a creeping, insidious transformation.
At first, it was just about getting the words down. When you're a non writer and tasked with writing six opinion commentaries every week, like, fuck, come on! (Fun fact: Per Canadian Press standards, fuck is allowed to be used in mainstream news and print without censorship. Fuckin' eh, right?)
But as I wrote more, I started reading more of what others were putting out, and more importantly, I started editing my own work with a critical eye. I began to understand the nuances, the subtle power of a well-placed semi-colon, the clarity a correctly used pronoun could bring. I started to develop what I can only describe as that "editor's eye" – the kind our Canuckian colleagues have possessed for 20-plus years, the ones who can spot a dangling modifier from a mile away.
I won't even go in on how having to navigate English with Brazilian Leo made me really start to question the ridiculousness of our language. What's the different between a cabinet and a cupboard? Why is it dinner and supper? Why do we drink a drink but eat a food? Why are we in a car but on a plane? Questions that, when asked upwards of 30 times per day, make you want to, if I may, blow your brains out... and it's not even noon on a Monday.
And now? Oh, god, now. Typos annoy the absolute hell out of me. Before this app, I genuinely didn't give a shit. I'd scroll past a glaring grammatical error without so much as a blink. Now, I find myself involuntarily cringing. I see "its" instead of "it's" and I feel a phantom itch on my brain. A misused "your" instead of "you're" sends a jolt of irritation straight through me. The ones I never paid attention to were "every day" and "everyday." I've become that person who notices. The one who cares.
I'm particular when I read stuff now. I slow down. I unconsciously scan for errors. I mentally correct sentence structures. It's like my brain has been rewired against its will, forced to acknowledge the very linguistic inconsistencies I once so vehemently rebelled against. My casual dismissal has been replaced by a low-grade, constant hum of grammatical awareness.
So, here's the burning question that keeps me up at night, whispering in the dark: Am I technically a word nerd now? Has six months of app-mandated writing turned me into one of them? The people who appreciate the Oxford comma, who understand the difference between 'affect' and 'effect,' who secretly judge your Facebook posts for their lack of punctuation?
I don't know the answer. All I know is that my rebellion has ended, replaced by a grudging, almost obsessive, appreciation for the very structure I once deemed "stupid." So, if you see me staring intently at a menu, or pausing mid-scroll with a furrowed brow, you know why. My apologies in advance. It's not you, it's my newly awakened, app-induced inner grammar guru. And honestly, it's exhausting.