I got this in an email and found it pretty interesting.
Instructions: Just read the sentence straight through without really thinking about it.
Acocdrnig to an elgnsih unviesitry sutdy the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dosen't mttaer, the olny thnig thta's iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy.
[ September 11, 2003, 03:47 PM: Message edited by: solo ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
WOW!
That's awesome! It worked!
Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :
It would have worked a little smoother in a serif face, but yeah, pretty cool!
Posted by solo (Member # 3148) on :
It worked for me too. I wonder how well it will work for some of the Grammar Nazis around here...
Posted by Narnia (Member # 1071) on :
That's great!! How long did it take people to perfect that sentence?! I think I'm going to send it in an email to everyone I know just to bug the crap out of them. Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
So... now I dnot need to slepl crtrocely?
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
It's amazing how often we aren't really 'seeing' something. Our minds fill in the blanks on things more than we realize, such as with the above example.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Context is everything. If there was just a random list of words with the interior letters rearranged, I'd be much harder to correctly guess them.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
I think that "without difficulty" should be changed to "without much difficulty." I could read it, but not nearly as fast as I could have read something that was spelled correctly. Also, those words aren't nearly as jumbled as they could have been (compare to Teshi's "slepl crtrocely"). I wonder if this came from a real study or if it's just one of those made-up things that circles the net (the poor punctuation makes me think that it didn't actually come from the university).
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Very true Tick. What we perceive is only loosely based on what is actually there. I've read some fascinating studies on the subject, but unfortunately I don't have time to find them and link to them at the moment.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Oh, I assume it isn't from an actual study. It is pretty cool though.
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
I could read it at full speed. Jon Boy, perhaps you are hard-wired to check for spelling and punctuation mistakes than some of us? Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I think this explains speed reading too, to some extent. You know how it is after you read a book for the first time. You can read it through again in half the time. You just pick up stuff here and there and it still feels like you read the whole thing. The best part is, you still find new stuff in it the tenth time you read it!
Posted by solo (Member # 3148) on :
I read it at pretty much actual speed as well.
I assume it is just one of those things that gets emailed around and not actually from a study.
One interesting thing is that I am currently reading the novel "Flowers for Algernon" and I noticed that in the first few chapters where Charlie has not had his operation I was reading noticably slower. I don't know if this is because I was trying to read it and pronounce the errors intentionally (to simulate how Charlie wrote and presumably spoke) or if it was because I had difficulty reading it with all of the errors. I think it is probably a combination of the two.
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