<story><title>Unsettling capital letters</title><url>https://art-by-kaine-shields.tumblr.com/post/643105913844154368/fun-fact-about-me-is-that-when-i-was-a-kid-id</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>steve_adams_86</author><text>I find it incredibly fascinating how readable the end results are. They’re so wrong, so fun and attention-grabbing, and somehow it makes sense.&lt;p&gt;I’d really like to understand better how it is that we can decipher language so well. At least, it seems like we’re good at it. Why can I read that font or that calligraphy? It’s almost an abomination, haha. Yet my brain troops on, parsing and processing, turning those squiggles back into what it knows.&lt;p&gt;Truly fascinating stuff. I also enjoy the back story here. Exploring written language as a kid was a lot of fun. I settled on a strange way of writing, not much unlike the runes on the inside of the ring in the LOTR movies, and it was entirely arbitrary and almost an artistic decision. Totally impractical. I still write like that to this day.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oconnor663</author><text>Reminds me of this classic:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.&lt;p&gt;I think that paragraph oversimplifies. (For example, splitting up the gh in &amp;quot;rghit&amp;quot; or the tt in &amp;quot;ltteers&amp;quot; would make them much harder to scan.) But clearly what it&amp;#x27;s getting at is true, that there are certain details of words and letters that we tend to focus on, and we can ignore quite a lot of noise as long as those details are in place.</text></comment>
<story><title>Unsettling capital letters</title><url>https://art-by-kaine-shields.tumblr.com/post/643105913844154368/fun-fact-about-me-is-that-when-i-was-a-kid-id</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>steve_adams_86</author><text>I find it incredibly fascinating how readable the end results are. They’re so wrong, so fun and attention-grabbing, and somehow it makes sense.&lt;p&gt;I’d really like to understand better how it is that we can decipher language so well. At least, it seems like we’re good at it. Why can I read that font or that calligraphy? It’s almost an abomination, haha. Yet my brain troops on, parsing and processing, turning those squiggles back into what it knows.&lt;p&gt;Truly fascinating stuff. I also enjoy the back story here. Exploring written language as a kid was a lot of fun. I settled on a strange way of writing, not much unlike the runes on the inside of the ring in the LOTR movies, and it was entirely arbitrary and almost an artistic decision. Totally impractical. I still write like that to this day.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deaddodo</author><text>Part of the reason is, we don&amp;#x27;t actually parse letters individually, but the patterns of words&amp;#x2F;letter-groups, sentences and general grammar.&lt;p&gt;Another responder mentioned the infamous Cambridge study. My Layman&amp;#x27;s take would be that the patterns are recognizable enough that the pattern-matching portion of verbal cognition can still associate them properly without conscious thought. And any &amp;quot;misses&amp;quot; are filled in or trained by contextual clues.</text></comment>