Published on 12, July, 2020
The stereotyped autistic person is obsessed with maths, science, technology, but I wondered if there is another type who is obsessed with words, correcting word mistakes, dictionaries, learning new words etc. A Word Nerd.
I am a proud Word Nerd, I have zero interest or skills in maths, science, technology. It is a reason I didn't even consider I was autistic until I was in my 40s/50s- I wasn't a computer geek, so I couldn't be autistic, could I?
What do you think?
I saw a tweet recently by Holly Smale which was a lightbulb moment for me:
"That’s where all these “missing” autistic women are hiding, isn’t it?
In words.
Crack open literature and I guarantee we’ll all come tumbling out."
Yes, yes and yes!!! Well said Holly and Ruth. I'm sure proofreaders are on the autistic side, probably editors too. The publisher I work for has such strict rules e.g. all right instead of alright, no colons or semi colons etc. They are really fussy with their rules. Although I like that because I'm fussy about writing rules too
Also I think autistic women have more active imaginations than men, I know a lot of autistic female authors.