Pickylexia
Apr 4, 2008
Dr Andy MacPherson from Elgin has identified a condition which, if only he lived further away, I’d pretend I thought up myself.
He calls it Pickylexia. It’s a neat description for the condition of being a bit, well, particular about spelling and grammar and the moment I heard it I felt that not only had I discovered a new soul mate, but also - at last - a diagnosis.
Symptoms of pickylexia can include:
- Shouting and pointing at wrongly spelt (‘spelled’ is also correct) signs
- Inability to finish reading pieces of writing containing errors
- Eye-rolling and tutting at misplaced apostrophe’s (that one was A JOKE)
- Hurling ungrammatical novels across bedrooms so that they bang against the far wall
- Inability to pack cars
Number five, the inability to pack cars, may seem a bit strange, but it’s the hidden clincher, hit upon by the genius Dr MacPherson. It determines whether you might be fully pickylexic, or just a wee bit fussy about your spelling.
If you’re the sort of person who identifies with symptoms 1-4 above, you could just be nicely meticulous about the written word. However, if you also find yourself stumped by the physical logistics of getting your family plus luggage into the car for a weekend away without involving the roof and a ball of string like the Clampetts of Beverley Hills, then I’m afraid you’ve got it. You’re pickylexic.
Pickylexics try to hide their condition when they’re out in public, for their own safety. They are all too aware that one person’s chronic pickylexic is another’s irritating swot and if there’s one thing Dingwall Academy taught me back in the eighties, it’s that you don’t want to be outed as one of those. Pickylexics are diffident, furtive creatures, the Wombles of the English language, sorting the grammatical bits and pieces that the everyday folks leave behind.
Treatment for pickylexia focuses on management rather than cure. It’s softly, softly here, even though two identical adverbs side by side may well trigger panic attacks in sufferers.
If you’re invited to pre-book, for instance, rather than just book, let it pass. Ignore ‘different to’ and ‘outside of’.
Breathe.
Correcting someone’s grammar only makes you a target and with your lack of skills in anything three-dimensional you’ll be dead, basically.
Use email sparingly. Computers are deserts when it comes to capitalisation and punctuation; it’ll do your nut.
Cut down on the late night apostrophe-peeling raids off the sides of vans. Balaclavas aren’t a good look and however vehemently you try to argue that the placing of that dodgy apostrophe was the greater crime, it’ll be you that ends up in jail.
Or simply become an English teacher. I can’t help thinking there must be dozens of pickylexics living out happy and contented lives in English Departments up and down the country, managing their condition by reuniting the split infinitives of our sons and daughters and generally making the freshly-hewn sentences of our young that little bit more beautiful. I don’t think they use red pens any more, though, and I lament that.
My pickylexic no-go area centres on the word ‘available’. ‘Bar Lunches Available?’ What else would they be if you put out a sign advertising bar lunches? Unavailable?
And Dire Straits lost it for me during Romeo & Juliet. Come on, guys, those dice WERE loaded from the start!
Perhaps Dr MacPherson and I should form a Pickylexia Support Group. A nice, safe environment, in a library, say, or a corner of a bookshop, where modern clichés like ‘safe environment’ are banned.
What would we talk about?
“Did you get here all right?”
“Don’t you mean, did I arrive safely? Yes, thank you. How are all the family?”
“Aha, perhaps you intended to say ‘how is the family, family being singular? Very well, thank you.”
“Oh! Oh! Well, interestingly, no, I didn’t, because when I said ‘how are all the family’ I was actually asking after the health of the entire family, there being more than one member of said family, although in fairness, perhaps I ought to have asked, ‘how are all of the family?’”
“Mmm, maybe so. Can I get you a coffee?”
“Oh, I have no doubt that you can, but may you? Yes, you may, that would be very nice….”
And we’d make notes, happily.
Sounds like a grand night out.
The risk of coming out as a Pickylexic is the chance that this piece is full of mistakes but if so, then obviously it’ll be the paper’s fault.
