Musings from the Middle: Breaking up is hard to do

by Cathy Allie

     When I was younger, I learned to spell just about anything (except French words, and frankly who cares about any of them but quiche?). I rarely erred in using the correct form of verbs and making those subjects and verbs agree.
     I took pride in knowing what should be capitalized, how to punctuate correctly, the differences in homonyms, and that I should move prepositions away from the end of sentences.
     In fact, I made a living of sorts as a Grammar Guru.  I taught English and journalism, and later I worked in communications. If a participle was caught dangling, I righted it. I paid attention to the order of adjectives and moved other modifiers into the exact right place in sentences. Direct address question?  Pshaw!  I had your answer, Scarlett.
     And then I met Autocorrect (and later his cousin Grammarly), and my skill set took a trip to Canada or another fine place where people have cool accents and everybody gets good, inexpensive health care.
     It started innocently enough, with Mr. Autocorrect catching a misspelled word, that actually could have been the word ‘misspelled’, which for some reason gives me trouble. I was immediately attracted.
     New love is always flawless, right?  We overlook annoying habits and talk to our friends about our crush. I was crushing hard on Autocorrect, and he reciprocated pretty well…at first.     
     My texts were becoming error free. It was the little things, like an extra space materializing when I had neglected to insert it that strengthened our relationship. He learned to correct my sister’s and a couple of friend’s unusually spelled names when I dictated into my phone and even suggested emojis to accompany my words to make sure my receivers knew exactly how I felt.
    We were getting along swimmingly, and I even started to feel guilty about how I was using him, sometimes just tapping in the start or a semblance of a word and letting him do his correctional magic.
    But just like the day where a new love’s cologne that used to smell like the beach to you now smells like fish rotting on that beach, trouble arose. Autocorrect began to assume things about me that just were not true.
    He changed the word plan to fang, so that my text told a co-worker I would like to have a fang moving forward. To this day, she covers her neck when around me, afraid I have become a vampire. Autocorrect didn’t like MO for Missouri and changed it to NO, freezing my online order at the delivery address phase. I am pretty serious about online orders.
   Autocorrect didn’t like my colorful language, erasing a few choice curse words and replacing them with family friendly verbiage.  That’s when I headed into settings and shut him off. 
     I missed him for a day or two, but slowly my spelling knowledge returned, and I decided I was okay with some flawed capitalization.
     My recovery was almost complete when one fine day about a year ago, the program I was working in suddenly offered Grammarly’s good advice for sentence phrasing. “Oh, yes, I see how that adverb would be better placed just right there, thank you,” and just like that I was crushing again. 
     Grammarly was a little sneakier in reeling me deeper into my feelings. Squiggly yellow lines drew my attention to the need for a better word choice. And I dutifully made the corrections, even enjoying the weekly report I got for my efforts.  Grammarly smiled at me with his happy yellow face, and I flirted right back.
   At first the weekly reports had me ranked as an overachiever, always in the high 90’s.  Then slowly my numbers began to drop. And Grammarly wanted a “bribe” of sorts to make me feel better.
    “I have several suggestions for moving your writing from good to excellent,” he said.  He offered me the benefit of the computational linguists and their fancy algorithms to better analyze my apparently weak sentences.
     A constant thorn in my side, Grammarly would hint that there were three more errors in the passage I had just typed, subtly disguised with a hazy screen over the correction.  Like a love-sick teen wondering why her date never called her back, I worked lots of extra time, ruminating on what Grammarly had found that I didn’t. Was it a stronger synonym?  A suggested introductory clause to promote sentence variety?
    One day I spent about 30 minutes reviewing about four paragraphs to see if I could self-correct Grammarly’s grim countenance. I was talking to myself, phoning a friend, researching answers, and sweating bullets over a potential error. I was in trouble.
    Recent interactions in account, and after hearing about a particularly terrifying Dr. Laura podcast on toxic relationships, I ended my time with Grammarly. But the pain of lost love still exists within me (and yes, I am fully aware I started that sentence with a conjunction). 
    To help me heal, I have signed up for a Daily Dose of Grammar, sharpening my skills in increments. Wordle has helped me remember all the five letter words I used to know, and the four letter ones remain ever present for me anyway. However, subtle reminders of my past loves exist all around me.
    Last week at the license bureau, a frustrated clerk confided in me that she wished their data screens had Autocorrect.  I just smiled, myself wishing I knew her well enough to warn her against his charms. Instead I said, “ You are doing a perfectly fine job,” knowing with certainty those modifiers were not dangling at all.