Subtitles in my head
First published: 18th April 2026
I have subitles in my head.
When I am speaking, or listening, or even just listening to my inner monologue, I see inner subtitles. They appear involuntarily, in real time.
Most of the time, I find that they help me understand rather than that they distract me
Usually around half a sentence stays on my inner screen at a time, but if I concentrate, I can make it be more, or less, down to a single word that stays in place and flashes as it is replaced by the next word, in the style of ripreader and other apps.
By default, my subtitles are in a serif font, black text on a white background. With a small effort, I can change the size, colour, or typeface of them. I can even add strange transition effects if I want to, but that is never helpful for understanding.
This means that I am unable to think a word without noticing how it is spelt. Spelling mistakes are very jarring to me because I am so familiar with the way a word should look. If someone asks me how to spell something, I fix the word in my mind's eye and then read off the letters. I can just as easily spell the word backwards, but this is a less useful skill.
The fundamental language of my thoughts is text. I can't think a sentence with knowing (or making up) the spelling of every word in it.
If somebody tries to tell me the tune of a piece of music, the subtitles say "du du du du du" and I get no information at all from this.
When I am learning foreign languages, I learn how to read first. Then, I learn how to listen by mapping sounds to text. There is no concept of a word without a spelling. So I find it necessary to do that step first.
I don't remember a time before I could read. I have a very few memories from a time when I rationally know that I couldn't read, but those memories are just pictures. A face. A tree. The green watering can that I got for my third birthday. I did learn to read young. I remember sitting in kindergarten reading a book to another child, and the child and the teacher insisted that I wasn't really reading, I must have memorised the book from hearing it read to me so many times. But I knew I was really reading. I understood how the letters mapped to sounds, and could figure out new words I hadn't seen before. I guess I would have been four years old then.
That same kindergarten did have one braille book in the book corner, and we children were convinced that if you closed your eyes and ran your fingers over it, you should be able to read that too. Not everything children say they can do is to be believed.
I want to document this because most people that I tell are very surprised. It was widely believed for a long time that everybody had an inner monologue, but it is now recognised that a substantial number of people don't. But I've never met anyone else whose inner monologue is accompanied by visual text like mine.
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