An Illusion that Explains Why Typos Are So Hard to Catch

io9 offers a fascinating suggestion of what happens when we read text. "It's true that we miss those types of things routinely. But that's generally because we look for what writing is — and not what writing isn't. What writing is, generally, is a way to communicate meaning from one person to another."

It turns out that English abounds in words that are medium in size and usually have redundant letters ("redundant" has 2 ds; "letters" has 2 es and 2 ts). "It's possible to scramble those letters around while keeping them near where they would be, if the word were in its correct order. German, scientists found, is also a good language for that sort of thing." So we see what the word is supposed to be (we're reading for communication, right?) instead of what's actually there.

There's a very cool puzzle paragraph, where the letters of each word are scrambled except for the first and last, rendering the words intelligible. It's as if those first and last letters provide anchors, or clues to the meaning of the word, and our expectations and familiarity with English sort out the mishmosh in the middle. Kind of like Scrabble or crossword puzzles.

An Illusion that Explains Why Typos Are So Hard to Catch