In Chapter 3 of Understanding Comics, McCloud discusses something called “closure”, the “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole”. He talks about this concept mostly in comics, with visual images. How we, by using closure to our advantage, can directly imply things that are not shown. The human brain is very good at assuming things and making connections to lead us to a conclusion. As I read this chapter, it reminded me of something I learned about how well our brains are able to use context, especially when we are reading English words.
Fuor Eaxmlpe, you can raed tihs wouthit a pobelrm.
That sentence is readable, even though the letters are jumbled up. That is because the first and last letters have stayed in place, so our brains are able to use context clues and assume what word is trying to be conveyed.
Y0U C4N S1M1L4RLY R34D 7H15 W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17.
This sentence is readable, even though multiple letters have been replaced with numbers. This is because our brains can quickly identify what letters the number looks similar to, and use context to quickly decipher which word is trying to be conveyed.
https://www.livescience.com/18392-reading-jumbled-words.html
I find this extremely interesting! Our brains are so good at taking context to figure things out that we can start jumbling up words and still somehow understand it with little difficulty. However, I don’t believe this is considered “closure”. The words are all still there, each spot where a letter should be has something in its place. It’s less like filling in the blanks and more like unscrambling a riddle. I do believe, though, that this idea is a bit similar to what McCloud discusses and also does a great job of showing how well the human brain is able to assume things based on context.