Gestalt! Mrrrrow!

So this afternoon I'm idly surfing around, killing time until I can go home, and I happen across a coworker's blog. Before I know it, I have an enormous crush on this guy - and why? Because he used the word gestalt.

This guy's a software architect and a total smarty-pants, of course. Most guys in his line of work don't seem to care too much about pansy shit like spelling, but he just devoted an entire post to the decline of spelling and language skills among the Millennial set.

In particular, he says, it's becoming hard to tell whether a word is misspelled because misspellings are now so prevalent. We (well, some of us) recognize words not by their individual letters, but by the letters' relationship to one another - a spatial relationship sort of thing. We know the word by its gestalt.

Sigh. Say it again, man. GESTALT. mmmmm.