Spelling. A key to "speed reading".

Wade · #1 June 11th, 2006, 09:12 PM

I found this at another forum.
You might have seen this before. I'ts brilliant!
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'Spelling'

Aoccdrnig to rsheerach at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig!

Atrocities · #2 June 11th, 2006, 10:46 PM

Ya, someone posted that here a while back and it sparked some discussion. Interesting how that works huh... kinda cool that you can mispell most words and people read faster.... LOL. Thanks for posting it.

Enjoyed re-reading it.

Will · #3 June 11th, 2006, 11:38 PM

"Without a problem" would depend on what you would define as "problem". There is a small subset of the population that gets little tweaks whenever a spelling or grammar error is encountered in a text; a lot of these are employed as writers and editors. Some have it worse than others. There are definitely a few people I know that would scream after only a few words of that, and would then frantically search for a pen (preferably red) as the page prints out.

For me, it depends on whether I am skimming or reading something. If I'm skimming, I'm not really looking at the words, I'm looking at the sentences and paragraphs. If I'm reading, it's kind of like I have a 50-year-old man in my head reciting the text in a nice baritone. That or a speed junkie trying to speak so fast that the words mush together. But whenever I'm actually reading, I tend to notice the spelling errors, and to a much lesser extent, the grammar errors. This past week at work, I needed to extend some code and make it work with programs I was writing. Throughout the entire thing, there was a variable that was spelled "recieved" instead of "received". I lasted about two minutes before needing to do a Search&Replace.

Renegade 13 · #4 June 12th, 2006, 01:42 AM

I bet someone who wasn't a native speaker of the English language would have a very hard time reading a sentence like that. They might eventually puzzle out the meaning, but it'd take them a while.

Personally, it takes me longer to read a sentence like that than a normal sentence. Though it's still fairly easy to discern the meaning.

Strategia_In_Ultima · #5 June 12th, 2006, 05:59 AM

Quote:

Renegade 13 said:
I bet someone who wasn't a native speaker of the English language would have a very hard time reading a sentence like that. They might eventually puzzle out the meaning, but it'd take them a while.

Nope

But then again, I learned how to speak English when I was still young (I still have the highest grades in English class), so I might not be the prime example.....

Q · #6 June 12th, 2006, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Renegade 13 said:
I bet someone who wasn't a native speaker of the English language would have a very hard time reading a sentence like that. They might eventually puzzle out the meaning, but it'd take them a while.

I can read it about half as fast as a normal English text. But I think I would get tired very fast reading a longer text like this.
It shows however how flexible our brain works.

Raapys · #7 June 12th, 2006, 01:14 PM

That's pretty neat. Not sure if it works well with longer words, though? Especially words we usually don't use.

NullAshton · #8 June 12th, 2006, 01:30 PM

You can read it like that, but not as fast as you can read words regually. Your mind has to actually note how long the words are, and figure out what word/words it could possibly be. Also, a lot of how that works is probally related to context clues.

rdouglass · #9 June 12th, 2006, 02:23 PM

It is a very good example as to how good of a computer our brain actually is at emplying "fuzzy logic" - not Yes or No but something in between.

Think of how long a spell checker on a decent computer would have to deal with that sentence and would not be able to decifer the messge but just guess at what the words should be. Ya, our brain guesses as well but we can put these guesses into context with other guesses and not necessarily in any linear order.

If you think of the algorythms that would be involved, our brain truly is a marvelous computer.

(But why do we still get the 'ya-hoo's firing their guns when drunk and stuff like that - see other thread.)