[mhh__]

One of the (many) things that led me to getting a referral about possibly having ADHD was noticing that my hackernews comments are absolutely riddled with missing words, missing sentences etc. On hacker news that isn't so bad, but when writing in a formal context it is pretty annoying looking like a moron for forgetting a preposition or whatever.

Recently, I even wrote "buy" instead of "by"! Crazy times

[jkhdigital]

Only on HN can I encounter an ADHD subthread in a thread about the sexual merits of mattress materials

[maximus-decimus]

That would indeed be rather strange in a MatterMost thread at work.

[willhinsa]

This is a fantastic comment, and so . Thanks for the laugh. :)

[0] the intentionally missing word is "true"

[1] the intentionally missing reference ([0]) is after the word "so"

[2] there are no more omissions

[penjelly]

missing words or mistyping words is more symptomatic of dyslexia then ADHD isnt it? I have some form of dyslexia but i believe its a spectrum disorder and mine is workable so ive never considered medication for it

[Amezarak]

I don't think eliding words or automatically substituting homophones is a symptom of any disorder, just very common for 'good' typists - good in the sense you don't have to think about the mechanical action of typing or spelling, in the sense you've reducing[1] typing to a sub/unconscious activity.

It's just something occasionally goes wrong with the thought -> word pipeline buffering in the one case. I find the homophone substitution more interesting - I would never, ever make the mistake writing, or if I was paying attention to what I type (I find it happens even more commonly if I'm not paying attention to the window I'm typing on), at some level it seems that the unconscious word-to-keyboard process 'hears' and transcribes somewhat phonetically in a way totally disconnected from my conscious thought process. I find it fascinating I can 'visualize' the spelling of and think a word like, I don't know, 'bare', but my hands, as if completely independent, type out 'bear.'

Another piece is that, if someone talks to me while I am typing, sometimes words from our conversation creep into the text.

Interestingly, I find these mistakes are more common when I am taking stimulants (caffeine) than when I am not.

[1] This is another common mistake I've noticed. I am quite certain I thought 'reduced', but 'reducing' came out anyway. I think this is usually due to me changing the grammatical structure of the sentence midstream; I probably originally thought "you're reducing" instead of "you've reduced", but I typed faster than the thought completed. Maybe this says something about my intellectual capacity. :)

[penjelly]

ive noticed all(?) of the things you describe here and i find it interesting to see them put into words like that. Curious that you notice that caffeine has an effect too. Something ive never considered before.

also, i tend to agree with your conclusion, i think what i described are normal human errors, not necessarily signs of dyslexia.

[mhh__]

Could well be, but it's amongst a bunch of other things as well.

[sjg007]

Did the ADHD thing pan out? I do this too.

[mhh__]

Apparently I'm going to find out next week. I've been meaning to start a blog (but not started, see the trend?) for a while, so that might be something to record and compare in a year's time.

[BugWatch]

As a potential ADHD sufferer (hopefully to be diagnosed soon) - if you do, I'd very much be interested in reading about your experience(s).

[Gracana]

I call those thinkos. They're weird to notice. Why did my brain do that? Do I do it often? No idea.

[Gatsky]

I also find myself making these homophone errors or complete word omissions. It has only started happening since I turned 30. As you say, I seem to have zero awareness of them as they are occurring.

I think it is an advanced state of distraction that causes it, a brain unable to really care about anything until the next dopamine hit.