Aoccdrnig to rscheearch...etc.
Joi Ito blogs a comment about our ability to derive sense from even quite badly scrambled sentences.
The example currently tearing around the Net at great speed, showing up three times in email already today and on many, many blogs, goes like this:
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. 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 ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Um...
The test works, but I think there's more to it than this reading "the wrod as a wlohe" thing. That sounds right, but I think context perhaps plays an even bigger part in what's going on here.
In fact, what it illustrates most clearly to me is the importance of the words of three letters or less as the connective tissue in almost any sentence of coherent English.
Here's a test, using only the words that are too small to scramble:
Now is the of our by son of
Think about it for long enough and you should be able to fill in the rest of this famous quotation without the remaining words - scrambled or otherwise.
Context (not content) is king.
Just in case you're struggling, here's a scrambled version to make it a little easier:
Now is the wnetir of our dtnosnicet mdae giroluos smmuer by tihs son of Yrok.
To test the idea that we can still read scrambled text mainly because we read words as a whole, try figuring out a word like 'dtnosnicet' without the surrounding context.
So I think what's happening here is a combination of two phenomena.
But tehn I'm cntaelriy not a lusingit, so waht the hcek wulod I konw?
The example currently tearing around the Net at great speed, showing up three times in email already today and on many, many blogs, goes like this:
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. 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 ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Um...
The test works, but I think there's more to it than this reading "the wrod as a wlohe" thing. That sounds right, but I think context perhaps plays an even bigger part in what's going on here.
In fact, what it illustrates most clearly to me is the importance of the words of three letters or less as the connective tissue in almost any sentence of coherent English.
Here's a test, using only the words that are too small to scramble:
Now is the of our by son of
Think about it for long enough and you should be able to fill in the rest of this famous quotation without the remaining words - scrambled or otherwise.
Context (not content) is king.
Just in case you're struggling, here's a scrambled version to make it a little easier:
Now is the wnetir of our dtnosnicet mdae giroluos smmuer by tihs son of Yrok.
To test the idea that we can still read scrambled text mainly because we read words as a whole, try figuring out a word like 'dtnosnicet' without the surrounding context.
So I think what's happening here is a combination of two phenomena.
But tehn I'm cntaelriy not a lusingit, so waht the hcek wulod I konw?
