Can you read this?

[Blue_Chill]

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

[Kamika]

1. yaeh

It was esay, i ayawls raed rlleay fsat ayawny. I dnot pay aolt of aenoitttn to the wrdos.

[LARED]

2. Amazing

Wyat tje himen mygd cin do.

[Lizz612]

5. tje tripped me up, but otherwise fine. COOL!!

edit typo

[LARED]

6. That's not surprizing

as the mind also tends to skip words like 'of' and 'the' as they are not always needed to comprehend so seeing tje 'confused' you

[pmbryant]

3. Cool :-)

I guess the research is correct, because I actually could read it, and without much difficulty.

:shrug:

How atubo taht!

;-)

--Peter

[SOteric]

4. *boggle*

yep.

[tinnyguy1777]

7. Wow

Tish is so vrey kcool. Ive nveer seen it bfeor, but the eplxantoinsmees lgocial----Slime=hahaha

[Deja Q]

8. Ok, can you read this:

"I like sex"

I just said the word "fascinating" :evilgrin:

You do prove a big point; Bush* and his cronies wouldn't know how to read regardless! :D

[Cush]

9. freaky

Had no problems with that

[amazona]

10. yes, nifty! NT

.

[leftist_rebel1569]

11. hmm...interesting...

I can read it, pretty easily too...

[cally]

12. I love this post..and as a somewhat serious note

One of my kids was dyslexic. She reads and comprehends extremely well now but she does not see the letters. She cannot spell and will completely mispronounce unfamiliar words even if she knows the meaning. She just learned to compensate for the reading disability.

Do you have a link to the research article or a suggestion on how I could find it. Thanks.

[LWolf]

15. No link

This was forwarded to me on an email list today. The poster said, "This was just posted on a literacy list. Interesting and kind of amazing, isn't it? So why do we torture kids with spelling? I find it fascinating that the jumble doesn't even slow down the reading much. Maybe this explains why I am such a lousy proof reader."

I wonder what literacy list it was?

[BritishHuman]

26. possible link

At Uncle Jazzbeau's Gallimaufrey:

Languagehat has an entry concerning the decipherability of English texts made up of words that have had their letters scrambled (except for the first and last). (via Avva in Russian) I had written something about this phenomenon back in March with a different scrambled text. (I am always amazed how these unattributed texts can spread like folklore across the Web.) It was hard at the time to find a source for the quoted text, but I think I've traced it back to some work that Kourosh Saberi at UC Irvine and David R. Perrott at Cal State Los Angeles have done, mentioned here in http://mambo.ucsc.edu/pdf/iesbs.pdf">an article by D. W. Massaro at UC Santa Cruz. I sent some email to Professor Saberi, but hadn't heard back from him. They wrote up their results in the 29 April 1999 issue of Nature, but I've been unable to find it online. Here's a press release for that article; see also this editorial in Nature Science Update.

[BrotherBuzz]

13. Weird!

I read the first line and a half and didn't even see a problem till I stumbled on the word 'Wrod' and read it rod. 'Wrod' appears again towards the end and that is the only wrod that doesn't work for me.

[mlawson]

14. Easily. Very interesting!!! n/t

[LARED]

16. Another test

> >Quick Eye Exam...
> >
> >This will blow your mind...!
> >
> >Just do it - don't cheat!!!!!!!!!!!!
> >
> >Try this its actually quite good.
> >
> >But don't cheat!
> >
> >Count the number of F's in the following text:
> >
> >FINISHED FILES ARE THE
> >RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC
> >STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
> >EXPERIENCE OF YEARS
> >
> >
> >
> >Managed it?
> >
> >Scroll down only after you have counted them!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >OK?
> >
> >
> >How many?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Three?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Wrong, there are six - no joke!
> >
> >
> >
> >Read again!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >FINISHED FILES ARE THE
> >RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC
> >STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
> >EXPERIENCE OF YEARS
> >
> >
> >
> >The reasoning is further down...
> >
> >The brain cannot process the word "OF".
> >
> >
> >Incredible or what?
> >
> >Anyone who counts all six F's on the first go is a genius
> >Three is normal.
> >
> >
> >Now forward this to all of your friends and back to the person who
sent
> >it
> >to you, but for the subject write if you got it right or wrong. And
> >please
> >don't lie because it will spoil all the fun of this forward!

[grasswire]

17. I guess you....

...don't have to be a genius to be a proofreader. I got six. But then I'm a trained professional.

I like these kinds of puzzles!

[Guaranteed]

29. I'm an idiot.

I only got three. :silly:

[Blue_Chill]

18. Very cool

good post.

[LARED]

19. Thanks

I wish I could say I made it up. My sister emailed it to me. The author is unknown to me.

[noiretextatique]

24. i counted only four

:shrug: missed two of the "ofs" at first.

[Dogmudgeon]

28. I also got the "right" answer

But the demo is still cool.

I wouldn't say that the mind can't process small words -- "particles" -- like "of", but they're harder to become aware of.

I wonder if it works the same way with languages that have fewer small words, and replace the particles with inflections ... ?

--bkl

[Karenina]

20. BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!

This is EXACTLY the same process I explained to my Deutsch Lehrer! We were doing "Nebensätze" including all the connecting words- he gave us an exercise and I produced a perfect translation just to demonstrate why, as a native Englisch speaker, they were ALL irrelevant to my comprehension of what was being communicated... but I DID manage fill in most of the blanks correctly. He LAUGHED!!!

[Castilleja]

21. That's pretty cool, I can read it....

N/T

[ForrestGump]

22. That's interesting, but it'd havebeen a lot cooler if you'd

spelled the words wrong, like gobbledygook, with just the first and last letters in place. :-)

[Shanty Oilish]

23. You bet

I can read simple cryptograms like those you find in the newspaper puzzle section, so your paragraph's no problem. However, I am almost infallible at spelling and can spot an error faster than a princess can feel a pea.
I hurt all over right now. ;)

[Ohio Dem]

25. That's something I didn't know.

Yeah, I can read it. Easily, too. I like things like this. Thanks.

[BurtWorm]

27. Istrneenig.

Rlelay.

[arwalden]

30. Only I Read "RSET" as "RESET" not "REST"

everything else made perfect sense.

In fact... I was 10 words into the message before I even noticed the first misspelled word. Weird.


-- Allen

P.S. I'll bet old George Bush couldn't read it. He does NOT read words by glancing at them. He sounds out each letter. (This is the TRUE EXPLANATION for his "monkey-face" expression as he speaks. The "R" sound that he over-exaggerates as he sounds out words is the sound that he's creating whenever he makes that puckered-up monkey face.)