And so I dipped a toe into the kooky world of online dating. I looked at lots of profiles of men who theoretically fit my criteria and whom the site had deemed “95-percent matches” for me. In most cases, I so did not agree.

Now is when I reveal just how intolerant I can be at times. I am a huge language snob–sometimes obnoxiously vocal when people make grammatical and spelling errors, and bordering on homicidal when people describe something as “very unique” or use “impact” as a verb. (At the moment, I bristle at “uptick.”)

So there I was, finally ready to let loose and embark on a carefree midlife dating adventure and I felt like I had been plunged into a verbal hell. I was horrified–I mean, horrified in italics–to discover just how many men cannot spell or punctuate or even be bothered to use the toolbar functions that will do those things for you. (Is it really too much to click on spell check? And if you won’t even do that much to find true love, what does that say?) Worse was the heavy reliance on cliches that plagued the profiles, turning all men into generic  “easygoing,”  candlelight-loving, moonlit-beach-walking, special-someone-seeking clones.

Was there anyone out there who had a nuanced personality? Who didn’t feel the need to state that he “lives life to the fullest” or “knows how to treat a lady like a lady,” or, my favorite: “enjoys good food.” I won’t even get into the swarms of men who think it’s OK (perhaps even cute?) to refer to themselves with lower-case i’s or who use apostrophes to make words plural.

Clearly, this was not going to be easy for me. My spiritual yoga friend has a refrigerator magnet that says “Leap and the Net will Appear.” Well, I leapt, and there was the net, crammed full of my pet peeves. I wondered what William Safire was doing Saturday night.