If you give it enough time much will become clear

When I was a girl I read a lot. Of course I still read a lot, if I didn't I can't imagine what my state of mind would be like. But it was when I was a girl that my love of British humor was lovingly planted and nurtured by my mother was, and knowing her, still is, a great fan of P.G. Wodehouse.

I read plenty of fairy tales written or published in Britain and when I got to school I had a lot of trouble because I spelled things incorrectly. Until very recent, after having meningitis and having to relearn to do some things, I used to spell words like color in the British way, colour, etc. It's possible that this blog has some entries with words spelled like that. After I was sick I would start to write words and stop because I didn't know how to go on. Either way seemed wrong but since I am an American I made a conscious decision to write the way people expect me to here.

But I've also had a lot of trouble with words like license and with punctuation; do periods and question marks go inside or outside of quotes? I used to freeze up on this and have to ask my boss, who used to teach English in his native Hungary.

Recently I've been reading several blogs that have pointed out differences between the British and American ways of spelling and punctuation and every single thing that I used to get wrong or was unsure of how to do today is because of the differences between the two ways of doing things. According to a comment in yesterday's Miss Snark question marks and periods go outside of the quotes in Britain.

I felt weirdly relieved by all this. At least there is a logical reason behind my confusion, it's more than just a bit of damage left behind by mindless viral invaders.

The most interesting thing about this is how often we run into situations like this. Something happens that we don't understand, something that slows us down or makes life a little harder and we've no idea why it's happening. But then if we can get one or two small pieces of information, it all makes sense.