"Think Fog"

Yesterday, on the redoubtable Althouse blog, I wrote in a comment the phrase "think fog", when I meant to say "thick fog." This has made me laugh, and I now christen it as a Coinage of The House of Fun, along with "malapropaganda", and....some other ones which I can't recall at the moment! I didn't even see the error; Prof. Althouse pointed it out saying "nice typo." But, interestingly, it is to me not strictly a typo, that is to say, a misspelling, accidental or otherwise. Rather, I simply didn't "hear" the word "thick" when I was typing, I heard my mind say "think."

I find when I type quickly, it's because I'm merely transcribing words I "hear" myself "speak." This is why my most common typing error is to simply forget to type a whole word, not misspell one. I've "heard it" already, and the brain went faster than the hands. When I write, I hear my voice 90% of the time. But sometimes I hear someone else's voice, even to the point of imagining what a persons voice sounds like if I haven't heard it.

The editing process is very different for me; there I tend to see the words as 3D shapes, usually with a particular color, often with a musical tone. I see editing as almost literally, orchestrating how I want a line of text to appear.

The period of my most writing took place when Camie and I were chatting away like magpies. We still do, but not as frequently as there are Beanie and The Little Man to wrestle and this takes considerable energy.

Christmas day, only one person called to talk all day, and I went out for lunch with one other person. I am surprised by my need for constant conversation...

...and am dismayed that Scarlett is not going to be at the top of the page after this post! Maybe I should put her in the masthead...like one of the women at the front of a ship...