I was handed a note in a dream once.

I handed it back, saying "sorry, I can't read in dreams", and confused myself so hard it woke me up.

it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t

I've never heard that before. What I have heard several times is that text is not static, so if you read something, look away, and then read it again, it'll say something different. That I can corroborate, along with the idea that this is how you realize you're in a dream and induce lucid dreaming.

I remember, watching an episode of Batman, the cartoon. In that episode, Batman was trying to figure out if he was in the dream or not, and he open books to see if he could read and realize that there were no letters in any of them. And that’s how he could tell he was dreaming because you can’t read in a dream.  from that day, I’ve always tried to read in my dreams, and so far, as far as I remember, I never succeeded. 

you can read in dreams but there’s no “continuity” of what you’ve read – within the dreamscape, you think (or you tell yourself) you’re continuing to read a book you’ve read in real life

this lack of “continuity” is one of the main tricks of lucid dreaming – read something twice (ex. time on a digital watch (not an analog watch)) – if the content changes, you’re dreaming – the secret of lucid dreaming is if that change triggers enough frisson for you to “wake up” inside the dream without kicking you out of the dream completely

I've debugged code in my dreams before, so I think dream reading is something that varies from person to person. Also I only have minor issues using computers and phones in dreams, like my typing sucks but it's not too difficult, keyboard shortcuts don't always do what I expect, etc; but I've heard of plenty of people who can't use tech at all or don't even dream of their phones.

I definitely do. I had a problem for a few years where I would wake up in the middle of the night, see a notification on my phone for a text or email, read it, and then take whatever action needed in the morning. This would be fine if I was actually waking up or the texts/emails actually existed. I was not and they did not, but I took MANY actions in the morning.

I heard that you can tell if you’re in a dream if you try to read something twice to see if it says the same thing both times. Probably true for some people. As it turns out, not a reliable method for me. I once dreamed up a whole damn cast list for a ballet I was working on which I could repeat verbatim the next morning. I proceeded to email my friend involved in casting with my hot takes on the choices and got a very confused reply about how they hadn’t even had the meeting yet.

The only solution I have found is to have a 100% no-exception ban on actually interacting with my phone at night so I am sure that whatever boring ass email I’m reading at 3am isn’t real.

Oh geez, I can't remember ever seeing a single letter in a dream.

Does it count if its sponsors on race cars? I've been getting that a lot.

Yes EcoBoost Ford GT, I read you loud and clear. You can stop appearing every time I sleep...

I can read signs or short texts, usually a little slowly since I guess technically I'm spelling it out in my mind as I'm reading it.

No. Everything just looks like complete nonsense.

A good way to tell if you are in a dream is to look at your hands. For some reason, your brain while dreaming is a lot like a diffusion model in that it's hard for it to comprehend what a hand looks like.

I can't. Sometimes I have dreams where it's terribly important that I read something but even then, no. The words make no sense.

I can't think of any dream I've ever had where there was any text to even try and read. Common knowledge about "how dreams work" doesn't seem like an exact science - like you said, you can read in dreams.

In the movie Waking Life there is a claim that you can tell if you are dreaming by trying a light switch, and that light switches don't work in dreams. I had a lucid dream where I tried it and the light switch did work. So I don't think there are any rules.

Yes, I can. The prose is pretty bad though, it has that markov-chain feel where it only flows logically relative to the surrounding few words.

Sometimes I see signs I can read but that's about it.

A while back I had an incredibly vivid dream about getting to and on the tube at King Herod station. That tube logo roundel with the name in the strike through was so, so clear and in several places in the station, along with a map of the line I could read. Upon waking I spent a good ten minutes googling it as I was so convinced it had to be a memory and was a real place.

Books and the internet have never worked for me in dreams though and I've had plenty of dreams where I've been trying to text someone and couldn't as the keyboard was gibberish and words didn't work.

And kinda related I suppose- I had a dream I was trying desperately to unlock my phone throughout this long adventure, and when I woke up my memory of my phone unlock glyph was fried as I'd basically overwritten it by doing it wrong so many times in the dream.

The whole following day had me freaking out trying to unlock my phone, to the point of drawing the nine dots out in my notebook over and over and over again, trying to link them up in the way I knew had to be right but wasn't working.

When it finally came back I realised that I'd been drawing it out mirror flipped all day. It's made me slightly uneasy ever since for some reason. It hasn't helped that I've started to notice other mirror flipped things in dreams after that too.

Barely. I typically can't remember more than a few words and the text is different once I go back. Dreams where I need to read something are among my most frustrating.

A technique I've used to trigger lucid dreams is by reading. If I read something, look away, and then look back in a dream it will say something different. Then I know I'm dreaming... or they've installed digital billboards.

Yes. I have had many dreams where I'm actively reading something, I'm texting somebody, there's a weird newspaper headline, the sign was wrong and gave me bad directions, etc.and I very clearly remember reading literal text and writing too.

I don't know where that "you can't read in dreams" thing came from (The Simpsons?) but it's bullshit.

I can't, though I can lucid dream. When people say "read," I feel like they're thinking of printed text but I find some I have similar problem with technology use. Like sometimes I'm trying to find something on the internet, or to show something on my phone to someone and it keeps not making sense. And I keep trying it again and again and it just get worse until I realize I'm dreaming.

I was reading in my last dream. I remember it well because the content was a language mess full of puns that my dream made up.

(Something about "el ga coguLLMeli bianchi e priti de tante grosserìe"; roughly "there are black and white mushrooLLMs of many sizes/incivilities". The book in the dream was mixing Portuguese and Talian this way. If anyone wants I can narrate the dream here, but be warned that there isn't anything too interesting in it.)

I have not heard of this as "common knowledge." I can't particularly remember reading in a dream, but I don't remember much about past dreams. Is there a source here, or is it just something you've kinda heard a few times?

I have definitely written code in my sleep. As to whether it would work in real life who knows, but I've had dreams that I was coding. It's very annoying to do it in your sleep and then go do it in your awake as well.

I once tried to read a license plate and couldnt read it multiple times until the car was gone.

Normally this is a good Lucid Dreaming trigger.

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no.

I've seen billboards, street signs, addresses written on curbs, numbers on apartment doors. Once was in a city reading a chalkboard menu for Mexican food, amazed at prices, wondering if I could speak Spanish well enough to ask questions.

Reading is never main focus though. More vaguely in background.

Yes but I always lose track after a sentence.

Sometimes I have trouble reading in my dreams, but not very often. I've also heard about the whole "if you try to read something twice, you'll different words the second time", but I'm quite certain not infrequently when I've reread things I've gotten the same thing in dreams. If I had to guess, I'd say that about a third of the dreams in which I reread something, I get the same result. Two thirds I get different results.

I don't think I ever look at anything or am presented with anything that has text on it in dreams, I've never been able to try. Even when I go lucid I end up wanting to do something fun like fly or breathe underwater and never try to test the limits of the dream.

Yeah, at least I can remember getting a phone call and looking at my phone and reading the caller ID. I don't think it comes up much though.

The fact that I read the caller ID and thought "oh yeah, that's my 4 year old daughter's lawyer" when I saw the name, that should have been a clue I was dreaming.

No. It’s always complete gibberish whenever I try.

Yes, I can read in my dreams. Though apparently I have lucid dreams as a default.

It's somewhat common for me to read in my dreams but I can barely see the text for a second (it is decipherable though): My perspective instantly shifts "inside" the book, or rather the story it's telling becomes the new focus of my dream and I can visualize it just fine (sometimes I don't even come back to the previous world, my dream is now about this new story). Same thing if i'm playing a game: for a second I see the frame of the monitor on the borders of my vision but quickly it disappears and all I see is the content of the screen. Sometimes it keeps looking like the game (like, Civ always looks like Civ) and others it becomes more flexible and cinematographic I guess, a new story that can go anywhere.

You guys have dreams?

It probably happens sometimes but more often than not I cannot. The way it manifests in the dream is usually DreaMe gets distracted or is “too tired” to focus the text into something coherent. Seldom is it a case of me looking at written information and it appearing as nonsense squiggles or something of that nature. Likely a reflection of my waking life where I basically don’t read physical books at all. (Read plenty of other garbage however).