My local supermarket uses this company's services for dealing with customers' personal checks. I know, because on the little swiping-and-signing podium I stand at while they scan my groceries, there's a sticker that says "Powered by Solutran". Except that's not what I see, every time I look down and read it—instead, I see "Powered by Soultrain". I wonder why this might be. The TV show probably isn't more salient than an arbitrary company name in that situation, especially considering that I haven't seen it in more than a decade. Why should I misread the single word "Solutran" as the two words "Soul Train", when the edit distance to "Solution" (for example) is shorter?
I'll bet it would make buying food about three notches cooler if the whole experience were "Powered by Soul Train", though...
(Did you know that Soul Train is "the longest running TV program of any genre in the entire history of first-run, nationally syndicated TV programming"? That's what it says here.)
In LA, driving east on Olympic, on the northeast corner of the intersection with San Vicente, is a Chinese restaurant HUNAN TASTE. But given the font used on the sign and my driving speed (35-45 mph), I invariably read it as HUMAN TASTE.
They were likely going for a tech-catchy blend of "solution" (and "tran-saction"?). Which it ain't so much. If it were pronounced [so-LOO-tran], maybe "solution" would be more transparent? But I'm guessing it's naturally pronounced [SO-loo-tran]. Boh!
Posted by: Angelo | September 03, 2004 at 06:37 AM
It's called a 'wackyparse'! At least, that's the alt.religion.kibology name for the phenomenon. Which I think serves.
I just had one myself, wherein I made 'Lucky Crone Variety' from 'Lucky Corner Variety.' Wackyparsing doesn't usually seem to be a bouma [http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/2781.html?1033399436] issue; it generally rather seems to be near-anagrammatic. Screwy!
Posted by: zusty | September 03, 2004 at 07:31 AM
(also, when I was trying to post that, moveable type inserted auto-link html into that url during the preview operation, to make it clickable, which makes sense (although it seems to've included the end bracket for some reason), but then when I attempted to then post the resulting comment, MT berated me for including html! Ah, I love it.)
The lesson: don't preview.
Posted by: zusty | September 03, 2004 at 07:36 AM
Was checking blogdex out and ran into (and only just skimmed, so don't know if it's any good) this article:
www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition.aspx
on word recognition.
Posted by: Angelo | September 03, 2004 at 09:15 AM