Write missing word when

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I’ve mentioned my “missing word problem” here before. You may have noticed it in reading the blog or my comment replies–my tendency to skip over a small but necessary word when I write. This is more than a simple problem with typos, which I can easily catch and fix when proofreading.

The mystery of the missing words had proved intractable enough that I’d given up on solving it.

Until now, that is! I’m reading “The Mind’s Eye” by Oliver Sacks and right there in Chapter 2 is a potential answer: aphasia.

Aphasia is a disruption in expressive or receptive language. It can be as severe as a complete loss of understanding of language, including the inability to speak or think in words. (Aphasia usually affects all forms of language, not just speech.) “Global aphasia” often results from a brain tumor, stroke, traumatic brain injury or degenerative brain disease.

However, milder forms of aphasia are characterized by:

• difficulty in finding words (especially nouns, in particular proper nouns)
• a tendency to use an incorrect word without a change in sentence structure

In discussing notable case histories of aphasia, Sacks mentions the English writer Samuel Johnson, who experienced aphasia after a stroke at the age of 73. While Johnson eventually regained the ability to speak, he “made uncharacteristic mistakes, sometimes omitting a word or writing the wrong word” in his writing and correspondence.

Adding Up the Evidence

I omit words when I write–more often than the average person it seems–at a rate of about one missing word per one to three hundred words, more if I’m tired (yes, I’ve started keeping track).

The missing words are small but important, like not, an and the. I need to proofread multiple times to catch them, often in an alternative format, because my brain likes to help me out by pretending the missing word exists and skimming right over the omission.

I sometimes use the wrong word without noticing. In writing, it tends to be a word that is close in spelling or sound, though not necessarily in meaning, like bring instead of brain. When speaking, my substitutions are more entertaining. For example, last night The Scientist was using a kitchen towel to clean up a mess.

“Put that in the dishwasher when you’re done,” I suggested helpfully.

He looked at the towel and frowned. “You mean the washing machine.”

Right. That’s exactly what I meant. And what I thought I’d said. This happens a few times a week and I rarely notice that I’ve done it until someone points it out. It’s more common when I’m fatigued or in a setting with a lot of distractions.

I have trouble with retrieving words, especially names of people and things:

“I’ll recycle the, the  . . .” I’m staring at the newspaper and pointing at the newspaper and I cannot for the life of me come up with the word for it. All I have is a blank–a tangible, almost physical hole in my mind where newspaper should be. “I’ll recycle that that  . . . thing after I finish reading it. $%&*! WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DIFFERENT WORDS FOR THINGS?!”

I’d been attributing the increasing frequency of gaps in word retrieval to getting older. It’s frustrating, especially when I’m trying to find the right word for a written piece and it refuses to surface. Sometimes it will be hours before I can come up with the word I’m looking for; fortunately I’ve learned how to set the problem to process in the background. This often results in me randomly exclaiming things like “dichotomy!” at inappropriate times.

Is Aphasia the Answer?

If this is indeed mild aphasia, then I finally have an explanation for some minor but annoying language difficulties. Perhaps my auditory processing delay is a form of receptive aphasia?

Then again, this could all be tied to Asperger’s. I’ve heard others on the spectrum mention difficulty with finding words at times. Our issues with processing spoken language are widely known. The missing word problem, though? Does anyone else experience that to the degree that I do?

Eager to learn more than what Sacks presents in his brief chapter, I Googled aphasia and instantly regretted it. Here’s what I found at that reliable bastion of truth, Wikipedia:

“Acute aphasia disorders usually develop quickly as a result of head injury or stroke, and progressive forms of aphasia develop slowly from a brain tumor, infection, or dementia.”

Ruh roh.

My language glitches have become frequent enough in the last 2-3 years that I can no longer ignore them. The missing words. The struggle to retrieve words. The odd, unpredictable substitutions. The Scientist says that my receptive language difficulties seem to have gotten worse in the past year too. I ask him to repeat himself a lot, especially when he’s not facing me and I don’t have the advantage of watching his lips.

And this is where I think it pays to stop Googling and back slowly away from the neurology textbook.

The language oddities I’ve described here are firmly in the “inconvenient” category for me right now. Unless that changes, I’ll consider the similarities to aphasia symptoms an interesting bit of trivia. Stay tuned . . .

**In proofreading this multiple times, I found 7 missing words (my, their, a, I’m, an, the and of) and 1 incorrect substitution (ever for even). There may be others that I missed.

“Here is your paper. You have very many sentences missing words, why do you think that happened?” This was the first time someone really comforted me with this hidden embarrassing and shamming trait in my writing. I was scared to answer. I didn’t know what to say to them, because really didn’t why that was happening.

As a literature student, it was embarrassing to be good with your arguments but have such mistakes in your work. I had to work twice as hard to make sure my train of thought was shared well in my discussions and deliberation on paper as they were in my speech. I would have to write fast and leave enough space for a word I might have missed so that when I do my re-reading I can fix it if I found it. Other times I would still miss it because in my mind the sentence is perfect as I had thought it and written it.

Up until now I still struggle with this. When I am still in the same state of mind and on the same train of thought, I miss out on the corrections that need to be done when I re-read my work. It would take me a day to go back to my work and re-read to see what I missed and do the necessary corrections.

For one who runs a content marketing agency, always creating communication materials and message-ables, this is where the embarrassment becomes guilt-ridden. Sharing a piece of content with missing words can be a turn-off for readers. One time a friend reached out, took me for lunch and had a conversation about my writing issues where he concluded and suggested that maybe I am dyslexia.

People, what a scare! I was not ready for that conclusion. I googled the disease immediately. Never had I been described like that. The hardest my teachers did was tell me maybe I have spelling problems and thus decide to jump the words I couldn’t spell but could pronounce. Yeah, there was that spelling issue but this was to be blamed on the kindergarten school I only attended for 1 year.

Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding), this wasn’t me! I booked a session with a family doctor my uncle and had him find the doctor to help me.

“Your brain is too fast than your hands. Your tongue also very faster than your hands, that’s why you’ll never have this happen when you speak, only when you write”, said the doctor after many writing sessions of him examining me. “Notice the word present in your head while typing a sentence. You’ll notice that the word in your head is often a couple of words further along with the sentence than the one you are typing at that moment”. He concluded with suggestions of almost the same things I had been doing like write and re-read two days later, find an editor, think slowly while typing.

Today, my close friends say I have a Subaru engine (my brain/mind) in a Vitz (body) hence the accidents that tend to happen in my writing, even in my idea development processes. My team says I can be so far ahead of my time with my thoughts and how I deliver them. “You are too fast and you always forget the good stuff afterward”. On this one, we have settled with me recording my speeches so I remember and they can catch up too.

With spell checkers as an enabler on my gadgets, I have managed to have this underlap but sometimes it comes through and I have nothing to do about it… ( have you seen some of my tweets?! God!) Just own it and move on- that is me. But for client’s work, my team is so deliberate at this and makes sure they catch it at all times. I even had an editor for my blogs, RIP Nevendar!

I can’t change it but I have managed to own and use it to my advantage. Not have it limit or stop me from writing. I am even now writing a book. Someone called it an intelligence trait that I should be proud of and show off. But as with all things, there are negatives and positives. I will take any. So, if you are like me leave me a comment and let us throw a party celebrating our Subaru engines. Also, every good gift comes from God and worthy of celebration.

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