Read-Bump™
Derived from "
speed-bump" and rhyming with it, a
"read-bump"
is something one's eyes hit and trip over which then slows down a
person's ability to speedily and efficiently read the overall text. A
person's brain becomes trained to the spelling and structure of his or
her native language, and text is most efficiently processed by the eyes
and brain when it adheres to this standardized structure and spelling.
Any deviations cause the brain to have to do more thinking, to
translate/decipher and "fix" the damaged text. How much time is lost
depends on the severity of the deviations or mangled text, which can
vary from subtle to extreme. While most people can compensate and the
extra mental work is done mostly subconsciously except for the most
extreme cases, the slowdown is nonetheless a very real and measurable
thing. The ironic thing is that while many speed-bumps are
intentionally done by the author in an attempt to
save time, they actually shift a much
larger time-burden off to the
reader, forcing the reader to actually waste
more
time as a result than was saved in the text's creation. This makes
read-bumps extremely pointless and inconsiderate, whether done
intentionally or otherwise.