Weird Wednesday Sept. 27th: Cartoons and Wordnesia
Why do some words look odd when you spell them? From http://www.annhgabhart.com:
Have you ever blanked out on a word that you were writing? You know the word but suddenly you have no idea how to spell it. Or perhaps you have written a word, but it doesn’t look right.
From http://www.smithsonianmag.com
It’s just a common brain glitch called wordnesia. This problem crops up when you can’t spell the simplest words. When familiar words suddenly seem like the strangest things. We don’t know what exactly happens in the brain when wordnesia occurs, but some researchers have an idea.
When you’re reading, what you’ve got is a very practiced part of the brain that responds automatically. I mean, when is the last time you looked at colonel and realized it was spelled funny? The automatic parts of reading take over. My guess, in the phenomenon you’re talking about, is that, very briefly, the automatic parts hit a speed bump and go, ‘that can’t be right.’ And those automatic tasks, when you disrupt them at all—when you think, ‘am I breathing on my backswing,’ or when you think, ‘should I push the clutch with my left foot’—anytime that you engage conscious monitoring of those parts that ought to be automatic, you get a hiccup.
So, it’s not just me…
Beginnings, colonel, conscience, weird, definitely, muscle to name a few. I blame spellcheck. We no longer have to consciously have to think what we write, just as long as our fingers are in the general vicinity of the keys, the computer will take care of the rest.
When I pick of a pen and write, it is a slower process, but I make less mistakes. Muscle memory perhaps? I used to hand write everything, taking notes as the teacher, then later professor stood at the front of the class and talked and talked and talked …
I developed a shorthand version of my writing which was a combination of printing/cursive/shortened words. Maybe I shortened the words that were hard to spell, but there are still words that I spell incorrectly and others that I second guess because they don’t look right.
Then there’s that i before e rule that has so many exceptions that it shouldn’t be a rule at all …
-Leon
Who are the Miniscules? The Miniscules: Humble Beginnings4 days left!
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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