You know how sometimes you look at a word, and even though you know it’s spelled correctly, and it’s a perfectly fine word, that you’ve encountered over and over, it just looks wrong?
I’m designing a logo that prominently features the word “blast”. I’m trying it out in different fonts, to see I get any inspiration. And the more I look at it, the more I’m convinced that there is no such word. It just looks, you know, like a random jumble of letters that have no business being together. Especially in all caps. Like a bad Scrabble hand.
I hope the feeling goes away soon, or I’m going to have some trouble with this project.
This seems to happen to me once every couple of months, and I’ll get hung up on it for a while. I think the last word that really bugged me was “senile.” It wouldn’t make itself look right no matter what I did, including looking in the dictionary.
Mm. Once happened to me whilst preparing a mass-mailing at my (previous and possibly future) job. I had to address a couple dozen (maybe about 50) envelopes by hand, all to addresses in Albuquerque.
Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque…I ended up taking a break and sheepishly asking one of my co-workers if she was sure I was still spelling it right.
The word niece has been looking funny to me. It looks worse when I flop the i and e around (neice) but it tends to look wrong when spelled correctly. As does a local place name I’m not going to try to spell.
There’s a theory that says that if you view a word repeatedly, it becomes disconnected from its meaning in your head and you cease to view the concept but just the letters on the page or whatever. You see the word rockrockrockrockrockrockrock and suddenly it becomes disconnected from your mental concept of ‘rock.’
Interesting theory, by why doesn’t it work in reverse? You see a hundred cars drive down the street, you don’t forget the word car.
Sometimes, I have to say my name a few times when I introduce myself to somebody for me to pronounce it correctly and for them to hear it right. It’s the weirdest thing. I have a fairly simple one syllable English name, but sometimes when I actually have to say it, well, it sounds foreign to me…and then it comes out foreign. For some reason my tongue wants to go soft and loose and won’t pronounce the end hard consonant. I don’t get why this happens at all.
The word thing happens to me too. “Embarass” never looks right… I always want to put an "e’ in there somewhere but then it doesn’t look right, either.
