Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, (1 Viewer)

[Steve Kuester]

"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh 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 are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe and the biran fguiers it out aynawy."

Saw this in someone's sig on the Blue Man Group website, thought I'd share. It's pretty funny how easy it is to read.

 

[Luis Esp]

This is scary!

 

[Peter Kline]

This is one thing that the web has given us that is not useful. It's that people are either lazy or our education system has let us down immensely. On a tech chat site several years ago a poster said he didn't have to write perfect english as he was going to be a computer programmer. This guy wouldn't have been able to fill out an employment application. He was absolutely serious.

 

[dave_brogli]

I cant beleive that I was able to read all that without missing a beat.

Neat-o!

 

[Erik.Ha]

On a related note... has anybody been following the "Crazy Bass" thread in DIY?

 

[andrew markworthy]

Well, the explanation is partly right. The reason you can read it is due rather more to what we psychologists call semantic facilitation, which is a fancy way of saying that the context helps. Take an example from the above paragraph; the word 'iprmoetnt' in itself cannot be easily read, but in the phrase 'the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae.' it is easily read because the context enables you to make an intelligent guess.

Semantic facilitation is a thoroughly-researched phenomenon and has been the basis for several theories of reading and reading teaching. Amongst other things, it explains many proof-reading errors (e.g. a misspelled word will be missed because it is only skimmed over in reading).

In fact, we read far less of a page than we realise and not in the way we intuitively suppose, either. For example, if you read something out loud, your eyes will be a couple of phrases ahead of you are reading out (what's called the eye-voice span) although your conscious experience is that your eyes and voice are in tandem.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

We actually had a thread with the same example last summer.

A lot of data compression may be viewed in a similar vein. For example, DD and DTS use a model of the human ear and throw out stuff in the frequency domain that's not likely to be heard anyway.

 

[John Watson]

What we have here is a failure to communicate?

Just more bricks in the wall

Everybody lies but it doesn't matter because nobody listens..

"Everybody's talkin', but I don't hear a word they're sayin'"

Why do I always type interent and alos?

 

[Jason Seaver]

SWAG: Those words involve typing a single letter using the other hand, and your brain isn't switching hands fast enough?

 

[george kaplan]

Well this certainly doesn't always work.

"Wehn Mr. Saitn was terid, he was aslo ferid."

Now, does that say

"When Mr. Stain was tired, he was also fired."

or

"When Mr. Satin was tried, he was also fried."

or some other combination?

 

[andrew markworthy]

The full answer to this would require a *very* lengthy reply, but the basic answer is because the finger movements used in the misspellings are more frequently used than the finger movements required to type the target sequences (i.e. the words correctly spelt). Highly-practised movements will tend to be used in preference to less frequently used ones unless there is very rigid conscious control.

 

[Holadem]

10 replies and no links? C'mon HTF, you can do better than that: http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp
I received this thing in my inbox last september as well. It was even posted in "testy".

--
H

 

[Paul_Sjordal]

Obviously you're unfamiliar with the language skills of the average engineer (and what programmers do is pretty close to engineering, complete with the "everyone else is stupid" attitude).

I went to I.I.T. and I got a big grade boost in my humanities classes simply for being able to form complete sentences. Mind you, this was before widespread use of the Internet lead to a massive reduction in language skills nationwide.

 

[Peter Kline]

Paul,

I'm amazed and saddened.

Retep :frowning: