Yeah, I think most people don't read words, but recognize their shape, first and last letters being most significant. That's why it is relatively easy to read text with words internally scrambled. Unusual names, long words that are first learned from text, misread once and remembered like that forever. This is especially easy if you don't normally pronounce words while reading.

I still have to double take on "invertebrate", because I originally read it as "intervertebrate" or something like that :).