My mum is a French teacher and despite years and years of efforts, I stubbornly resisted understanding (or caring for that matter) any rule. Luckily, I was always reading a lot so my style is not that bad. My English style is built from being in the UK and is not formal. I cannot write formally in English. I did not have the training. This is why, when possible, I like to have the help of a good writer to complement my missing skills. Then, one day, few years ago, I had a customer that really, really cared. He destroyed our papers and made it clear that past a certain level quality writing is expected. They were right. That is when I started looking for style guides and discovered so many of them. In the UK you have The Economist style guide or the Guardian style guide. In the US you have the Chicago style guide. But then, if you search a little, you discover that most software houses have a style guide. Microsoft has one, Apple too, Mailchimp also and the list goes on and on. While I now understood style, and was having fun with punctuation, I still actively ignored grammar, not caring about adverbs or subordinates. Until now. For the first time I have a very important reason to care: my son has grammar exams. It is incredible how things that never stayed in my mind all of a sudden became vital and easy to remember. I am learning with him, with a smile on my face, feeling proud of being corrected and to help him as best as I can. Long-term memory is simply having something to remember plus a strong emotion; being a proud dad is very much a strong emotion.