It was once believed that we read by memorizing the shapes of the whole word, but that's a myth
- If we read by memorizing the shape of a word, then capital words all have the same shape and would be harder to read, but that's not how we read.
When we read, our eyes are actually making quick, sharp jumps with short periods of stillness in between.
- This happens so quickly that we barely know it's happening. Mostly we're reading forward, but 10-15% of the time our eyes are jumping back and rereading what we missed during the periods of stillness.