Interesting phenomina

[Banjo]

Found this little gem the other day, it freaked me out that I could read it easily after a few seconds.
Just look at the words as a whole, don't focus on the spelling.


I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are,
the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

[rbgarr]

I remember this was discussed on the forum last year when my keyboard went bad. I used asterisks for letters that wouldn't work and someone mentioned the first/last 'rule'.

I wonder if it works in all luaggenas and abhplates?

[Banjo]

Haha, not sure about other languages and alphabets, cna't sae wey it wrduln't.. :D

[Woxbox]

I deal with typography as part of my job, and consequently have heard and read what the experts think. Amazingly, despite hundreds of years of history with type design, there is not universal agreement about how people actually read.

That exercise makes one thing clear -- it's not spelling! Some say it's word shapes, others argue for general letter shapes or patterns. They used to argue that sans-serif type, such as you're looking at here, could never be read as quickly or as easily as the old fashioned serif type. But now that sans-serif is used so much, people have gotten used to it and opinions have changed again.

But I think my wife is the only person in the world who can read my handwriting.

[paladin]

I have been told.......(can ya really believe anything said by a government person).....that with some folks it's much easier as you are reading patterns. When in school to test your ability to work with codes some folks will recognize a pattern faster than others, and it works to some degree with languages also.
The Russian morse code system is different than the international morse, but going back to the days of radio intercept, it always seemed easy for me to copy....without reading or copying each individual letter. When reverse engineering a crypto key generator I always seemed to get it on the second or third try if I missed it the first time, it just seemed a natural progression.....
and even though I started with some Asian languages, the one(s) that always seem to cause the most problems for me are the Japanese ones, that my kids delight in doing and do literally in an instant.....The baby of the family, Mark, has got to have the most screwed up brain of anyone...he see's the way things are and just rights it down in ink, rarely overwrites.

[Antonio Majer]

Haha, not sure about other languages and alphabets, cna't sae wey it wrduln't.. :D
it's a mess with ideograms :D

[emichaels]

And now you know the secret of speed reading.

Eric

[PaulC]

Its a real bear if you try to sound it out :)