A grammar and spelling maniac I am not. When I write, I often make mistakes. When I hurriedly type, words will sometimes appear that aren't what I mean (buy becomes but, then becomes than, own becomes won, etc.). I misspell words, use the wrong words, and worst of all, leave out words entirely. The latter drives me the most crazy; missed words are a lot harder to catch than misspelled words, and spell check does not ask whether you forgot to put the word "not" before or after a verb.

This sometimes makes me worry about my cognitive skills. In a state of exhaustion the other day, I wanted to type the word "software" (a word I know), and right on the screen in front of me the ugly non-word "softwhere" appeared. That actually frightened me, for I would never deliberately type such a word. Yet something inside me -- some lurking demon, perhaps -- had made me do it. Only because I saw it and changed it immediately was I spared the indignity of having someone catch me having written this:

The portions I quoted above are taken from the scanned text, which I put through my scanner's OCR softwhere, and then edited.

But never mind me! What might an embarrassment for me is someone else's good fortune!

So, word usage drives me crazy because I try to get things right and I never do. This makes me very forgiving of other people's mistakes. I have never liked the snarky use of "sic" to imply a writer is idiotic or illiterate -- especially when the goal is to attack or undermine the writer's opinion. A bad speller might be dyslexic; and many a thoughtful person has been dyslexic, and even famous writers have been known to make spelling errors.

What really hurts is to be told that I have been misspelling a word for years, and the other day I was told in no uncertain terms that I was wrong to put a period after the word "Ms" because "Ms" doesn't have a period. And I always thought "Ms." did have a period, damn it! However, even if this no-period rule applies I suspect that there would be a loophole if you end a sentence with Ms. And maybe even if you end a sentence with "Ms." Oh yes:

In the United States, periods and commas go inside quotation marks regardless of logic.

The debate over the period seems to revolve around whether the "Ms" word is an abbreviation, like "Mr." or "Mrs." -- both of which take periods in the United States, but not in the UK (and the "Ms" not in Canada). The history of the word is fascinating, and it seems to date back to 1901, when it was suggested that it be used as an abbreviation for "Mizz."

However, in a Grammarphobia piece titled "Should 'Ms.' have a period?" it is claimed that despite an apparent usage rule to the contrary, feminists like Gloria Steinem who popularized the term do not use the period. Moreover, there is a distinction between grammar and style:

Q: The Chicago Manual of Style says "Ms." should have a period, but Gloria Steinem and the other feminists who popularized the term don't use a period. Which is right?

A: In matters of style, there's no absolutely correct or incorrect call. In grammar perhaps, but not in style.

Most American stylebooks, however, will advise using a period for an honorific, with the exception of "Miss," which is not an abbreviation. One might argue that "Ms." isn't an abbreviation of anything, either. But the fact remains that it is not a noun on its own, and exists only as a courtesy title before a name.

I can't help but notice that these people are political activists, so I am wondering whether what is called a matter of "style" might actually be an emerging form of political correctness. One of the hallmarks of p.c. is that rules change according to the diktats of those who make the rules. Within my lifetime, the politically correct "black" was replaced by the more politically correct "African American," and not only is the latter a mouthful to pronounce, it's also a monster to type, and I never know whether it's supposed to be hyphenated, which I suspect it isn't. There's just something about the activist mindset that always wants to correct people, whether the purpose is education, indoctrination, or simple "I'm smarter than you are" bullying; but because that's what these people like to do and so few stand up to them, the result is an endless game of rule changing. "Koran" has to be changed to "Quran," and "Montezuma" to "Motecuhzoma", and so on. The consonant and vowel movements involved are enough of a pain in the ass to give me a politically incorrect case of Motecuhzoma's revenge.

Whether I break these "rules" or not, I'd like to know once and for all what they are, and I'm still not totally clear on whether "Ms." has gotten rid of (or should get rid of) the period. But seeing as Gloria Steinem and company are supposed to be the last word in feminist p.c. jargon, I remembered that not only did she help popularize the term, she also created a magazine bearing that (undoubtedly trademarked) name. If she's so gung-ho anti-period, then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that the very magazine which she created to help put the word on the political and grammatical map would use it as she intended?

Well, take a look at a recent cover:

Ms. has a period.

Moreover, that's Ms. Steinem herself, right on the cover of the magazine she started. Connect the dots any way you want, but there's a period right there, and she seems to be staring at it. I hate to say that it's "her" period, but the fact that the period is there would seem to contradict any claim -- by her or anyone else -- that it shouldn't be.

I realize that I cannot dictate style, but as far as I'm concerned, the period stays.

Period.