Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Can You Raed Tihs?

A B-Lister recently reminded me of an item that appeared a few years
ago about an interesting reading-related phenomenon:

"Slepping: its so smiple"
  <http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1068149,00.html>
"A curoius ietm is going around the innernet at the moemnt citting new
 reserach from Cambirge Uvinersity tat indicicates we don't raed wrods
 the way we ttaut we ddid. Accroding to the exprets, the eye deosn't
 need or evn want the whoole wrord. It noets the frist and last lettres,
 and fills in the rest by inrefence. You can even add or dorp lettres.
 The jumumble in btweeen is irrveralent. Cogintion hapneps vrey fast
 and quite misteriollusly."

There's a related page about it at snopes.com:
  <http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp>

Included there is a link to a page at Cambridge's Cognition and Brain
Sciences Unit:
  <http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/>
which looks at the science behind it, and has info about the original
paper, plus some other related stuff if you're interested.