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Comment by kevinnk | Hacker News Reader

> "I read quite quickly (though only somewhat accurately) through pure pattern-recognition. I can look at, say, "word" and identify that the second letter is an ‘o’, but if I want to understand it as a concept I ignore the letters involved all together"

Isn't that how pretty much everyone reads? No one looks at every individual letter of each word!

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Not everyone reads like that. A good test to note if people uses pattern recognition is the way they pronounce a character proper noun after reading a book: I never can pronounce a character's name at the end of a book as I have never actually "read" it but only "recognized" it.

I also don't read aloud in my head for the most part. I get caught with this exact problem with character names -- I have to sound it out for the first time when I try to say it.

However, you are making a different point. Anyone who reads 'fluently' recognizes the shapes of words in one glance -- whether he reads aloud in his head or not. No one is looking letter-by-letter.

I know exactly what you mean. More than once I've read the book and on the second-to-last page I've realized that I have been reading (and mentally pronouncing) the name of the protagonist incorrectly.

I have other similar dyslexic traits to the OP. I can read and write well but I can't read out aloud. I don't usually find reading books enjoyable and I need to have code snippets and math formulae to break the wall of text.

But is this really a dyslexic trait? I use this method of reading most of the time by default because it allows me to read much much faster than reading the whole thing out. I often get pissed of at badly written text because of this because it slows me down a lot. For technical text it's often impossible to do this.

This is not a dyslexic trait. It is just a method very popular among dyslexic people as it is much easier for them to read this way

Hmm that occurred to me to but I also do the same thing with whole sentences. If I'm reading aloud and read 'As he ran he noticed a storm brewing', I'd often say 'A storm brewed as he ran'. Even if someone pointed my mistake out and read it aloud to me in my head I'd hear my version.

I do exactly that, weirder still i can often tell the words on the page say somthing differnt to I'm reading while i'm reading it wrong. My fiancee does the same thing (we're both dyslexic).

Many people do this - take a look at any children's show where they read books out. Typically the spoken words don't match the page exactly, but do carry the gist of the story. I do the same thing when I read to my kids, my brain summarises a sentence very quickly, and I repeat it in my own words without thinking.

I think this is just part of spoken communication - our brains short-circuit more formal written patterns into 'normal' speech patterns.

people have 2 methods for reading words, sounding out words letter by letter, this is what you use for new words, and names, the other method is the recognizing words by the general letter shape as described in the article. These are totally different paths in the brain and thus either can be impaired.

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