When I was about 12, I got a copy of “Dr. Who – The Game of Time and Space,” the board game from Games Workshop. In it, you moved around the galaxy, visiting worlds and trying to reconstruct the Key to Time. You had to fight classic Dr. Who villains like Daleks and Cybermen. In fighting them, you compared their strength to your defence. Ever since, I have trouble spelling the word any other way.<\/p>\n
I have no idea when or why I started spelling the word as “grey”.<\/p>\n
In junior high, I discovered that some people wrote their sevens with a horizontal bar across the vertical part of the 7, and that they wrote their 1 with a serif at the top instead of a plain line. I thought that was cool, and began doing it regularly. My math teacher in high school saw that I did that and asked if I’d been an Army brat.<\/p>\n
I got a degree in theatre arts, and still have a tendency to spell theatre that way.<\/p>\n
As part of that degree, I spent a semester in the UK studying theatre arts. Most UK phrases I learned never stuck with me, although I’m always on the lookout for a chance to use the phrase “panto horse”. One that didn’t is “with something in,” as in the sentence, “I don’t like banana bread with nuts in.”<\/p>\n
The space community talks about things being on orbit, much as New Yorkers will talk about standing on line. I’ve written things for public consumption where I’ve mentioned “repairs to Hubble on orbit” and had friends say that it should be “in orbit”.<\/p>\n
What are your affectations?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was about 12, I got a copy of “Dr. Who – The Game of Time and Space,” the board game from Games Workshop. In it, you moved around the galaxy, visiting worlds and trying to reconstruct the Key to Time. You had to fight classic Dr. Who villains like Daleks and Cybermen. In … Continue reading Affectations<\/span>