Johns Hopkins study exposes a reading illusion: Can you solve it?

Most of us breeze through life thinking we know the alphabet inside out. But what if we told you that one of its most common letters — the lowercase “g” — has been hiding in plain sight, virtually unrecognized? A viral image challenges this very assumption by asking a deceptively simple question: Which of these is the correct lowercase 'g'? The results reveal a surprising gap in visual memory and typographic awareness.

In 2018, cognitive scientists at Johns Hopkins University conducted a fascinating experiment to see whether people could recall and correctly identify the lowercase “g” in its double-storey printed form — the version commonly seen in fonts like Times New Roman. The lead researcher, Kimberly Wong (then an undergraduate), found that only one out of 38 participants could accurately draw the correct “g,” despite the fact that we read it thousands of times in everyday texts. The study revealed a powerful disconnect between reading recognition and visual recall — and it left the internet stunned.
Image: English Whirled Wide/Facebook

The image presents four similar but slightly varied versions of the lowercase “g,” styled in a double-storey type often used in print but rarely written by hand. To most people, these options might look interchangeable, but only one is correct. The first instinct is often wrong — not because we haven’t seen the correct “g” before, but because our brains never bothered to consciously register it. This experiment taps into the fascinating space between recognition and recall.

Let’s break it down: among the four choices, only Option 3 correctly represents the double-storey lowercase “g” as it appears in many printed fonts like Times New Roman or Georgia. The others are cleverly distorted or simplified versions. Most people, when asked to write a lowercase “g,” will sketch a single-storey version — the one commonly taught in handwriting — even though that version is rarely used in typed documents. This mismatch between what we write and what we read every day is where the confusion stems from.

Typography is something we interact with constantly but rarely study. The two-story “g” (as seen in option 3) is one of the most complex characters in the Latin alphabet, yet because we don’t handwrite it, our brains overlook its structure. This image cleverly exposes that disconnect. It’s a visual reminder of how much we absorb without truly noticing — and how vulnerable our certainty can be when tested by detail.

At first glance, this might seem like a trivial detail — who cares about the shape of a letter? But this phenomenon speaks volumes about how we process written language, how our memories work, and how design subtly influences our daily lives. Whether you’re a student, designer, writer, or just someone who thought they knew their ABCs, this image nudges you to pay a little more attention to the things you think you know. Because sometimes, the real surprise isn’t what you don’t know — it’s what you’ve seen a thousand times but never truly noticed.