The shapes of words
Aug. 12th, 2007 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedusorI just read a surprisingly interesting article on highway fonts, linked in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
530nm330hz's journal. I had trouble telling the difference between Highway Gothic and Clearview until I read the part about the shape of the words, and then I totally got it. Clearview places the letters closer together and narrows the gap in height between capital and lower-case letters, and that really does help form the shape of the word. Looking at it from that point of view, I could immediately tell the two apart.
I had a conversation a while ago with Mark andkat_nano about word shapes. Words have always had shapes in my mind, but I wasn't at all conscious of it until I tried to describe it. They're very definite shapes, but I couldn't express many of them to Kat, who seemed fascinated by the concept. "Shapes" might not even be the right term. They're not three-dimensional, and they move. No, not move. Flow. A sentence, if I focus on it, is like a complicated dance in my mind. When there's a spelling error, or even sometimes a grammar error, I know that something is wrong before I process the specific mistake because there's a skip, a misstep, in the dance.
Kat wanted to know if the shapes had color; to me, that was like asking whether wind has color. It's not an applicable question. I can't see them, exactly, nor feel them. I just know them. I tried to show her a few by waving my hands around, but I felt like an idiot more often than I felt like I was getting the sense of it across.
She asked if a movement ever reminded me of a word, and I said yes, but couldn't think of any examples. The next day, bagging groceries, I realized that the movement my hand makes when I open a freezer bag is the shape of the word "pot." It's the word that has the shape, not the meaning- the shape is the same whether the word refers to marijuana or cooking. Most word shapes don't correspond with actual body movements, though. The dance isn't done with a body, imagined or otherwise; it's a dance of words, and words only.
Some of the shapes correspond to their meanings, and some don't. The shape of the word "dress" feels like pulling up a handful of fabric in a swooping way, with a quick upward movement (leaving loose pleats in the swoop) on the right-hand side. It has to be the right because the "ess" part of the word is on the right, but that's not the case for all words; "over" moves to the left, and the center of the word (the part the movement is passing over) is the "v". I don't really think any of that makes sense outside my mind, though, and even if it does, the shape you're imagining probably isn't the same one I'm imagining.
"Does" is like a horse's neck facing left, with the "s" as a sort of fringe of mane, but only in that pronunciation. If you're referring to multiple female deer, it's a different shape, with more of a break between the "o" and the "e". The neck is more horizontal if the D is capitalized.
By becoming aware of these shapes, I've realized why I can't learn words without knowing how they're spelled. Sounds don't have shapes to me. (I suppose sound must have some bearing if pronunciation affects shapes, but words that are spelled differently but sound alike are also differently shaped. "Affect" and "effect" are not the same shape.) This is also probably why I have difficulty remembering words in languages that don't use the alphabet I'm familiar with.
I'm very curious about what you all think of this.
530nm330hz's journal. I had trouble telling the difference between Highway Gothic and Clearview until I read the part about the shape of the words, and then I totally got it. Clearview places the letters closer together and narrows the gap in height between capital and lower-case letters, and that really does help form the shape of the word. Looking at it from that point of view, I could immediately tell the two apart.I had a conversation a while ago with Mark and
kat_nano about word shapes. Words have always had shapes in my mind, but I wasn't at all conscious of it until I tried to describe it. They're very definite shapes, but I couldn't express many of them to Kat, who seemed fascinated by the concept. "Shapes" might not even be the right term. They're not three-dimensional, and they move. No, not move. Flow. A sentence, if I focus on it, is like a complicated dance in my mind. When there's a spelling error, or even sometimes a grammar error, I know that something is wrong before I process the specific mistake because there's a skip, a misstep, in the dance.Kat wanted to know if the shapes had color; to me, that was like asking whether wind has color. It's not an applicable question. I can't see them, exactly, nor feel them. I just know them. I tried to show her a few by waving my hands around, but I felt like an idiot more often than I felt like I was getting the sense of it across.
She asked if a movement ever reminded me of a word, and I said yes, but couldn't think of any examples. The next day, bagging groceries, I realized that the movement my hand makes when I open a freezer bag is the shape of the word "pot." It's the word that has the shape, not the meaning- the shape is the same whether the word refers to marijuana or cooking. Most word shapes don't correspond with actual body movements, though. The dance isn't done with a body, imagined or otherwise; it's a dance of words, and words only.
Some of the shapes correspond to their meanings, and some don't. The shape of the word "dress" feels like pulling up a handful of fabric in a swooping way, with a quick upward movement (leaving loose pleats in the swoop) on the right-hand side. It has to be the right because the "ess" part of the word is on the right, but that's not the case for all words; "over" moves to the left, and the center of the word (the part the movement is passing over) is the "v". I don't really think any of that makes sense outside my mind, though, and even if it does, the shape you're imagining probably isn't the same one I'm imagining.
"Does" is like a horse's neck facing left, with the "s" as a sort of fringe of mane, but only in that pronunciation. If you're referring to multiple female deer, it's a different shape, with more of a break between the "o" and the "e". The neck is more horizontal if the D is capitalized.
By becoming aware of these shapes, I've realized why I can't learn words without knowing how they're spelled. Sounds don't have shapes to me. (I suppose sound must have some bearing if pronunciation affects shapes, but words that are spelled differently but sound alike are also differently shaped. "Affect" and "effect" are not the same shape.) This is also probably why I have difficulty remembering words in languages that don't use the alphabet I'm familiar with.
I'm very curious about what you all think of this.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 09:37 am (UTC)My brother does math by seeing numbers on a number line in his head. He was an adult before he learned that not everyone does math that way. It's likely related to his Asperger's Syndrome -- the people who tested him for Asperger's were the first people to ask him about it. Anyway, you don't have Asperger's -- this is merely a fun anecdote of the kind that I love discovering and talking about.
So glad you'll be out here soon.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 05:09 pm (UTC)I do simple addition and subtraction that way, but numbers get more abstract to me the more complicated the operation. I'm fascinated by Asperger's, by the way.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 12:31 pm (UTC)The bulk of words can be traced back etymologically to times when they were chosen because their sound corresponded in some way to a thing or concept; only recently has literacy and learning advanced far enough that words could be created because how they looked on paper corresponded to a meaning, and while there are lots of well-understood interjections that can't easily be written down there are still very few words that can be written but not said. "Www" is the main example I can think of.
Personally, I have mathematical leanings, which means I spend a lot of the time thinking about deeply abstract things and some of the time having to invent new terminology to deal with them. Every now and then analogies are created with the various senses: for example graph colouring. Such analogies can be really useful — they let intuitions from other parts of the brain help in reasoning about stuff — but it's very important never to forget it's just an analogy.
Meanwhile, I can't read that New York Times article without registering, but thought I should mention that so far as I'm aware the UK's road signage typefaces are the clearest in the world. You can see them here, and examples of their use here.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 05:14 pm (UTC)Transport Medium looks a lot like Clearview, the font that U.S. highway signs are currently being phased into.
I used to have a cat!
Date: 2007-08-13 01:31 am (UTC)Added you as a friend.
Re: I used to have a cat!
Date: 2007-08-13 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-13 11:41 pm (UTC)-M
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Date: 2007-08-22 09:57 pm (UTC)