I don’t hear what I read, I see the text. However, I have screwed up plenty myself, so I’m pretty good at translating what they meant to say. Sometimes, I even “autocorrect” the homonym without realizing I did.

Like Monkey, kind of a mixed bag. Fiction? Casual text (instant message, so on), then my head is like an audiobook. I gave y’all some funny accents.

But, it seems like I have a second thread going when I do. I will zip along through some fiction but if I come across an incorrect usage, I will quickly read it and ‘hear’ the result, and something will trigger the ‘that’s not quite right’ alarm and I will read it again. In quick internet messages this does not bother me as. much, in supposedly reviewed and edited works it does.

Technical documentation, I see instead of hear, and tend to slog through it. Usually trying to visualize some architecture, getting distracted by that and coming back to original text and realizing I’ve only made it through the first paragraph.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:

quote:

Originally posted by Anubismp:
… I have oddly gotten into more than one argument about the use of commas.

The reply is usually “Microsoft Word said the comma goes there”.

I use the rules in "The Elements of Style" by Strunk/White. They prefer the "Oxford Comma".

flashguy

Mixed bag here as well. Reading fiction, it’s almost like a movie running in my head. Informational stuff is more I see the words. My mother made me take a speed reading course when I was in high school. It paid off. No idea if they’re still done. If not, they should be.

Most of the time, I hear it in my own voice but it can change. For instance, if I read something like: 'He's takin' the old skin boat to tunatown', I would almost certainly hear the voice of the late Burgess Meredith and see the coke bottle lensed glasses on him that he wore in 'Grumpy Old Men'.

I found a way to teach myself a form of speed reading in college. I don't hear the words, I see them. Anything else, especially bad grammar, slows everything down. I find bad grammar really annoying.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I answered "I don't hear," but that's not entirely accurate. I think I do "hear" what I read, but my brain interprets what I read, not what I "hear," if that makes any sense.

E.g.: If somebody writes "queue" when they really mean "cue," as occurred recently, I "hear" the same things, but my brain interprets the word I see.

I can usually interpret what they mean w/o pause. Sometimes, though, I may have to re-read a sentence several times, and think about it, to figure it out.

Poor grammar and incorrect usage are like fingernails on a blackboard, to me, but I'm increasingly just letting them go. They're a reflection on the writer or speaker. Not my problem unless I choose to make it my problem.

If it's written, badly enough, I just stop reading and move on.

What ensigmatic said ^^^^^^. That's about as accurate as I could describe it.

I don't think "hear" is quite the right word to use in describing what my eyes/brain are seeing/reading. It's kind of like a merging of vision and hearing, sort of like deaf hearing and blind seeing.

For me it often depends on the subject.

If I am reading fiction I start by hearing the words in my head and pretty soon (if the story is well written) it turns into a movie playing in my head. It can be very jarring when I return to the real world, often times it is the mental equivalent of slamming into a brick wall. When I was younger I could 'fall into a book' and hours would elapse before I resurfaced to find the sun had set and my parents had gone to bed.

On the other (gripping) hand if I am reading non-fiction I will hear the words without any imagery and I can blow right over incorrect homophones because I hear what the writer intended but there are plenty of times I have had to stop and re-read what they wrote because the text did not translate to sound correctly in my head due to poor sentence structure or grammatical choices.

An example would be a news article I read a few years back about unionized labor in New Jersey and various government projects that were late and over budget with no mechanism to punish the contractors. Several of the paragraphs were written as though Yoda was talking and it just did not translate well to "inner voice" from a supposed professional news outlet.

I think it helps that I have both an inner voice and a vivid imagination. Referencing a Sig Forum thread from a few years ago I can picture the apple in my mind, twist it and rotate it, expand it and shrink it. I can recall what a Dutch Apple Crumb pie would taste like or smell like and I can grow hungry with this imagery.

I'm a bit surprised that so many people here "hear" what they're reading. That's not because there's anything particularly strange about it - as we can see here in mark123's poll.

No, what gets me is that written and spoken English have always seemed like two distinct formats (or dialects, perhaps?) to me. Something written the same way someone speaks is actually a little awkward because it doesn't convey the tone, the rhythm and the context that (I think) adds context, meaning and interest to what's being said. As for speaking as we write, who here hasn't been at least mildly irritated to listen to someone - on talk radio, at a city council meeting, etc. - recite what they've written? It just sounds artificial.

^^^^^ Those of us with cultured ears prefer to hear English spoken with correct grammar, and with suitable inflection, pausing for commas, etc.

flashguy