Changing Spelling Removes Word Associations

Take the word ghost, for example. Always having seen it speld in this way, we hav come to associate the feelings arousd by the idea ghost with its accustomd form of visual representation. To meet the word in our reading instantly and instinctivly excites those feelings in our minds. To meet the same word speld gost, shorn of its familiar h, shocks us, and causes a temporary mental inhibition of the idea. The word seems to hav lost, with the missing letter, something of the wierdness ...

 Certainty in Alchemy

"We have a phenomenon very like that in industry," Galiagante said when she was done. "It's called green thumb syndrome. It sometimes occurs when a new plant establishes a complicated but known procedure for the first time. Your people set it up perfectly but nothing happens. The oxides won't reduce, the catalysts won't… cattle. Punishing the technicians accomplishes nothing. The reaction simply refuses to run. Eventually management will fly in somebody who's worked on the procedure before an...

 Keats Against "Cold Philosophy"

...Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.