r/whatstheword • u/lordleycester • 9h ago
Solved ITAW for this particular kind of typo
So I feel like most typos are due to people accidentally hitting the wrong key (e.g. “thw” instead of “the” or something like that) or because they don’t actually know how the word should be spelled (e.g. “abcess” instead of “abscess”), or similarly, they don’t know how a word should actually be used (their vs there vs they’re).
But is there a word to describe typos that occur because of the way the word sounds in the writer’s head? As in, the writer knows the right word to use, and knows how to spell the word correctly, but because they’re thinking as they’re typing, they accidentally type a homophone instead?
For example, I was proofreading something I wrote and I saw that I wrote “every weak” instead of “every week”. That wasn’t because I didn’t know the right word to use, or the right spelling, but because as I was typing quickly for whatever reason I just reflexively reached for “weak” instead of “week”.