As someone that does a lot of writing for a living, this is something I come across at least a few times per week. I’ve always wondered why but never thought to look it up.
As an example that just happened, I meant to type the word “confidence”. The rest of the sentence was formed perfectly but in place of “confidence”, I typed “condense”. Wot?
Perhaps even more strange, I never catch these weird mistakes until I’m proof reading my work later. I see the words appearing on the screen as I’m typing them and even though I was intending to type “confidence”, my fingers type “condense”, see that word show up on the screen and my brain goes ‘yep, confidence, that’s right’.
I assume this is a common thing but what gives? Most of my work is done on a PC in Google Docs so while there is spell check, there’s no autocorrect.
Possibly relevant, my typing speed usually tests somewhere around 120wpm. I’m not about to set a world record but I’m also not pecking at the keyboard with two fingers. Since I’m not really focusing on one word at a time and often even thinking about other things while I type, maybe it’s a typing equivalent of accidentally blending two words together when we speak?
In: Biology
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