When I’m writing with pen & paper and one word begins with the same letter that the previous word ended with, I have a tendency to only write that letter once (as in this thread’s title). This happens mostly when I’m writing quickly, without paying too much attention to it, and I’m not leaving much space between words. Occasionally, I’ll make the same kind of mistake with two different letters that are written similarly, as in “unti t en” - I’ll turn the l at the end of “until” into a t instead of starting a new letter. I don’t have any problems within a word, like with double letters, just between 2 words. And I don’t do this while typing, just while writing by hand. Does anyone else do this? Is there a name for it?
I do it all the time. One of the examples I can think of right off is “with the,” more often than not, becomes “withe.”
I do this all the time. It’s one of the many reasons why I prefer to use pencil for everything and don’t understand everyone’s fascination with pens. I mean sure, pens are good for signing important documents and whatnot, but for general writing, pencils are much more convenient. What I really don’t understand is people using pens for math problems. Anyway, this topic isn’t about pens, so I’ll shut up about this now…
I do it far more often typing than I do writing by hand.
Yep, it’s the address of my favorite team and the supposed address of someone in one of my favorite films. I can only hope that a few people catch on and react like they did in the movie -“You know, I kinda liked the Wrigley Field bit.” -“Yeah, real cute.”
Back to the topic, I realized that I do sometimes make the same mistake when I’m typing. It happens less often with typing than with hand-writing, I think in part because the spaces between words are less fluid for typing. Also, it’s easier to correct while typing and the errors look a lot like the typos that show up if I just happen to miss a letter when I’m typing quickly, so I don’t notice it very much. But I noted the other day that I was trying to type “I’m impressed” and I started out “I’m pres” before going back and correcting myself.
I do it all the time as well, not sure why. Although I do have an extensive history of messing up things I say / write / type.
To be honest when I read your title, I thought you were talking about the spacing, I didn’t even notice the fact that the letter was only in there once. Pretty ridiculous actually.
I do this often when writing by hand - though mostly in the sense that I start with word no. 1 and then finish with word no. 2 - sometimes I skip word no. 2 altogether and finish with word no. 3…
Well, at least you don’t write “teh” when composing a letter, that’s worth something. 
I do this in handwriting, as august9 mentions, and I have always figured that it is because the “text flow rate” is so much lower then typing that I get some sort of brain buffer overflow going – I’m thinking ahead of what I’m writing.
Since typing is somewhat swifter, the thinking-ahead buffer overflow issue doesn’t present itself as frequently. As previously noted, typing has its own flaws.
I do something simla rto what you describ ebut not quit ethe same.
Ooh, me too, Mangetout (and I first wrote that sentence “Ooh, mee too !”)
I’m always annoyed that the auto-correct thing on the spell checker hasn’t figured that out, the way it has with “teh.”