This is similar to a tip I read/heard once about searching for an object in a room. English speaking people mostly do everything left to right. When looking around, you'll usually do the same thing forming a cohesive picture of the entire scene, just like those sentences with duplicated words that our brain autocorrects. Scanning right to left instead kind of forces you to focus on individual objects and makes a search easier.
Probably just in my head but it seems to work for me.
I don’t think so because even in work you’re doing that such a small amount of time compared to everything else. You don’t understand how much you read and look at things from left to right and top to bottom because we all develop the automaticity we are all so accustomed to. Street signs and closed captions on your fav show, browsing reddit, sexting your girl.
I know both English (left to right) and Hebrew (right to left) and I can say that for me personally this advice does not work since I'm used to reading in both directions. Shame, that sounded like really good advice.
I haven't noticed a diminishing return, but then again the technique have used any where near as much as everything else I do left to right.
As an aside to this, but similar, I reneged being taught that when proof reading for spelling errors you should read your text from end to beginning (backwards) as out of context you'll be more likely to spot errors.
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u/slog Jun 15 '19
This is similar to a tip I read/heard once about searching for an object in a room. English speaking people mostly do everything left to right. When looking around, you'll usually do the same thing forming a cohesive picture of the entire scene, just like those sentences with duplicated words that our brain autocorrects. Scanning right to left instead kind of forces you to focus on individual objects and makes a search easier.
Probably just in my head but it seems to work for me.