Grammar girl here. I'm in yon Fog Fog your friendly guide to the English

language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

This week I have a fascinating segment

about how aging affects the ways we use and understand language,

where we fall short as we age, and what we can do to give ourselves a leg up, and how we can write in ways that

are more understandable to people who might be struggling.

And then I answer a listener question about the nails on the chalkboard word anyways, and it's surprising history.

As if wrinkled skin and stiff joints weren't enough reason to dread getting older,

research also shows that our cognitive skills decline with age, with potential problems including less efficient

processing and reduced memory capacity.

This may not be very surprising for people who can't ever remember where they put their car keys.

But what might be surprising is that such declines may also be affecting how well older adults

are able to communicate with and understand the people around them.

In their recently published review article, Psychol Linguists,

Willem von Boxel and Laurel Lawyer

look at research on the linguistic changes that come with aging.

Most of what they look at shows that as our cognitive skills decline with age, we also can

have problems understanding longer and more difficult sentences.

On the bright side, some research also suggests that this decline can be offset by relying

more on semantics than on memory.

In other words, what we know about word meaning.

You've probably heard older people say their memory is not what it used to be, or you've said it yourself, and

...