I type fairly fast – about 90wpm with error correction. In the course of online chatting, I will often find myself making typing errors that are…well, neither missed keys nor grammatical in nature, but more representative of my fingers not quite having heard what my brain was thinking, for lack of a better phrase.
For example, in a conversation I had recently, I was explaining (as I’d thought to myself) that a particular train runs between two cities. But what I’d typed out was, “…train *ones *between the two cities.” Now, obviously, “runs” and “ones” are similar-sounding words, but they mean very different things. It’s as if two different parts of my brain are playing a game of telephone with one another, and while it works most of the time, occasionally the connection’s a little fuzzy. The thinking part of my brain has had the thought, passes the thought on to the part of my brain that translates words into keystrokes, and then disengages. The translating portion isn’t doing any thinking at all, and therefore doesn’t employ any logic with regard to context that might stop such a mistake before it starts. I don’t catch the mistake until I re-read what I’ve typed (or until the person on the other end asks me what the hell I’m talking about).
So, does this happen to anyone else? And, if so, is there a name for it? Or (possibly a separate question altogether) am I just crazy?
Seems like the to/too/two and their/they’re thing–you are talking to yourself and typing what you hear instead of just typing words directly from your brain (“you” meaning “everyone”). In this particular case, turns out your inner monologue was taken over by Elmer Fudd.
I also get something similar. My mind says “type this word” and then moves on to the next thing. My fingers start typing that word but finish typing a different (but related) word. For instance, I may start to type “elevator” but the word comes out “elevation”.
It’s close to a homophone mix-up. |wunz| and |runz|
I suspect, but I don’t have citations, that the brain circuitry which decides which word to use is the same whether the word is spoken, written or typed. Speaking, writing, and typing are all fine motor activities and they’re told what to do by one of the many speech centers of the brain.
A quick check of Wikipedia doesn’t necessarily contradict me. It does point out that the theories behind Broca and Wernicke’s Areas have been surpassed by modern brain imaging. However, the division of speech centers, into morphosyntactic, syntactic, semantic, working memory, and lexical semantic processing, make my eyes crossed.
I think you need a neurolinguist for an accurate answer.
I have a typing glitch that I never do when writing: I’ll misspell a very basic word with a spelling that’s phonetic.
And seriously, there is no reason this should happen. I have never ever misspelled these words when I’m writing and I 100% absolutely know the proper spelling. It’s not like typing “definately” instead of “definitely”.
Oh, fine. You want an example so you can laugh at me? :: sigh ::
The one that stands out most in my head (for sheer embarrassment):
I do the wrong word and phonetic word mix up things too. I also tend to skip letters when I am typing or writing. For instance, if I am writing “office” my brain will be spelling the letters out as I am writing but my fingers don’t move as fast, so I end up with “o-f-c-e”.
I had neck trouble and arm nerve damage, and since this have frequent typos of the form where two letters are transposed, specifically two letters typed with opposite hands. That is, if one hand has a new delay relative to the other, these typos would result. Is there a name for this one? Anybody else do this?
I do something similar, but with American and British spellings. I’d type “manoeuvre” instead of “maneuver,” “colour” instead of “color,” etc. I used to get in trouble for it in elementary school. The pitfalls of having a library card. I usually catch myself consciously, but I still need spell check to catch “manoeuvre.”
I remember many, many years ago, well before computers, I was writing a letter to a friend (not with a quill, but you get the picture). It began:
*Dear XXX,
I am shore that you are glad to be home…
*
At this point I stopped and thought, “No, ‘shore’ isn’t right.” I wracked my brains for quite some time, but couldn’t think of any way to spell it that didn’t begin with “sh” so instead I wrote:
I do this all the time. It’s started happening more as time goes on, too, much to my frustration. Most often I screw up the suffixes of words, so I will type “interesting” instead of “interested,” for example, and not catch it until I go back and re-read it.
I will occasionally screw up to/two/too, or their/there/they’re, as well, even though I know the difference and will know it’s wrong as soon as I go back and look. I never did this in high school/college, so I wonder what that’s all about.
Maybe it’s from mental multi-tasking – I’m not just thinking about the words I’m typing, usually, but thinking ahead to the application of the words I’m typing (i.e. what will happen when the intended audience reads it). So the motor function of my fingers gets bumped farther down my brain’s priority list.
(Nor does it help that this stupid keyboard at work occasionally just misses keystrokes, so I type “brain” but get “br”. )
Years ago I was signing a greeting card to a girlfriend for her birthday or something. I meant to write “I love you”, but what came out was “I loved you.” Oops! And it was in pen, so no erasing. And I didn’t have time to go to the drug store to get another card. I can’t remember how I fixed it.
1 - See how much space I left between “I” and “loved”. If it’s enough, draw over the D with a heart shape and completely color it in, and do another one right before the L. Even if you’re not the type to do cute things like that, it’s about LOVE, man! She’d probably think it’s silly and sweet.
2 - Add something like, “from the first moment I/we (etc.)”
Can you tell I’ve had practice at creatively disguising write-os?
[sub]Or the time I bought a card for my cousins 4th birthday. I somehow herp-derped and got one that said HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY on the inside. :smack: Knowing that my aunt would probably find it more funny than anything, I changed the I to an O. HAPPY FORST BIRTHDAY! :D[/sub]
Another thing I often do when typing fast is to combine 2 words into one. This happens when the end of the first word matches the beginning of the second word. The one I do most often is:
withe (should be “with the”).
I also often get two “the’s” in a row: e.g., I went to the the bathroom.
I was looking over my notes from class today and saw that I typed ‘most’ instead of ‘both’. (“Humphrey removed area V1 from most hemispheres of the brain.” Stupid fingers! How many hemispheres do you think a brain has?) They don’t even sound alike, except for the long ‘o’ sound.
I type all my notes because it’s so much faster than writing, but I do end up making typos like this a lot.
)