Why do I keep accidently typing homonyms instead of the actual word I meant?
Great question! It happens to me frequently, and happens more when I’m typing quickly or conversationally. Spellchecks clearly wouldn’t highlight these areas so I find myself proofreading rather more than I’d like. I have friends who don’t have this problem, but their spelling/reading technique is different to mine. When I was taught to read I was taught to “sound out” one syllable at a time. In this way I was able to develop a skillset with which to pronounce unfamiliar words. It’s also useful with foreign languages, incidentally: I can often make a better guess than most of my friends at the pronunciation of words in foreign languages which I cannot speak but with which I have some familiarity. My friends’ on the other hand see to have learnt to recognise words by their appearance. In this way, reading for them seems to be more disassociated with speech. An advantage of this is that they are less likely to substitute in a homophone, but it is not without problems. One is when they co
