(no subject)

[moominmolly]

When you read a book -- when you get into the reading groove, that is -- how do you absorb the individual words? Do you start at the beginning and go to the end? Do you recognize the letters as a group? Do you recognize the shape of the word, or word sets? Something else entirely? Is this something you can even SEE in yourself?

In general, I think of my brain as working very much like my brother Paul's, but in this case, we've never really lined up, so I'm curious how the rest of the world works. I sort of have a pathological relationship to letters, so I'm not very objective.

EDIT: when people speak, I see the letters pass through my brain.

Comments

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

i'm much like this, but i don't recall explicitly teaching myself to hear words in my head, and references to people moving their lips while reading (or talking out loud to themselves) confused me for the longest time.

i've learned from doing recent reading aloud on car trips that i do not, in fact, pay the same sort of attention to the sound of writing when i'm reading it to myself as when i'm reading it aloud.

like some other commenters here, i absolutely notice misspellings and weird punctuation in writing, but that still feels like a visual thing-- a misspelled word looks wrong to me.

i don't see letters when people talk unless they emphasize initial capitals or something.

[vespid-interest.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly the same way, but recently discovered a different way of reading very poorly written text. Text that is covered in misspellings or has l33t-speak or is grammatically scattered. It feels like squinting but on a brain level rather than a sight level -- letting the words just sort of wash by with as little analysis as possible.