The spelling of “ove”

I am horrible with words. Horrible. I have been since I can remember.

One of my worst and most embarrassing memories comes in the form of a second grade spelling quiz. The fact that I can still remember this might make it one of the reasons that I have such a fear and distaste for writing. We’ll leave that for my therapist. (Please note: I don’t actually have a therapist, yet.)

Anyway, there I was spelling away. I was doing great until one seemingly easy word. “Of” my teacher said. I sat there mulling over the word, something I had probably skipped over the night before thinking it would be all to easy.

I sounded it out like all good second graders will do and still nothing. It looked as if my teacher was about to move on to the next word so I quickly scratched down “ove.” Yes “ove.” To this very day I’m not really sure what was going through my mind. That was the only word I got wrong on the test. The ONLY one.

Maybe this was the life scarring action that scared me away from this writing thing. Who knows? What I do know is my struggles inevitably continued. I’ve found out from my mom that I just barely passed a New York State writing exam in eighth grade. In high school I was not much better. I coasted through my English classes the best I could. By the end of high school I had decided that I was just not meant for this type of communicating. I was to rely on my art talent and somehow communicate visually. In college I did just that, avoiding my greatest weakness. (Side note: for some unknown reason I got a solid A in College Writing. I’m still not sure what happened.)

Writing more better

I’ve since realized that life is not like high school and college. I won’t be able to do the things that I want to do without knowing how to communicate in the English language.

The idea behind starting this blog in the very first place was to try to write more often and thus get better at writing. Lets face it, there might be some improvement overall but its not close to where I would like it to be. I still make embarrassing mistakes on posts and frequently have to go back and fix errors.

Not any more. No more excuses. I’m going to tackle the problem head on.

On a similar note: If you have any books, blogs, or other material that could help me in my valiant quest it would be much appreciated.

Also: I told myself that I would never ever design a post that didn’t have a web safe or otherwise easily readable font. I guess rules are meant to be broken. The x-height for FF Duper Web Pro made it OK as body text and the large size for the design helps too. Apologies to any of those that had a hard time reading or think this was a bad choice.

Colophon: Post set in the loverly FF Duper Web Pro by FontFont and implemented by Typekit. Special thanks to Tokyo Police Club for providing the sound track for design.