My wife sent me this via e-mail yesterday. I had seen it before, so many of you have probably seen it as well. But I thought it was kinda interesting. You can actually understand it.
THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
I am inflicted with this, and refer to it as Fat Finger Syndrome, or FFS. This is in no way to poke fun at dislexia, which is serious. This is just a typing disease, that many of us suffer from, you know who you are! I just had to go back and re-type several words, damn these chubby digits!
Posted by Robyn_Hood (Member # 2083) on :
Interesting. Fake nails can accomplish the same thing, as can an old keyboard with keys that refuse to work properly.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
"THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID"
OK...I give up. What is that second word please? All the rest, yes, I can read them just fine. I think the second word might be too long for the rule to work though.
Posted by Robyn_Hood (Member # 2083) on :
PHAOMNNEAL
How about now Christine? Maybe Phonectic sounds at the beginning of a word need to be maintained.
Posted by Lorien (Member # 2037) on :
<moans of agony>
Ah, this is taking me back to those days of required high school keyboarding where an automatic grade of 50% was quite often scrawled across the top of my "timed typing" for not spotting my own mistakes.
Thank God for computers and spell check!
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
No, I still have to work at it, but at least this way I figured it out after some work....phenomenal. For that matter, the word "power" was obviously misspelled to me, but the short word was easy to untwist after a second. Only "human" and "mind" actually looked like those words the first time through, and I had to reread to see that they were misspelled.
Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :
heh... interesting.
It's also been said that we only look at the top half of letters when we read, more or less ignoring the bottom of half. I can't remember where I read it tho'...
For example: Take a sentence you've never read before. Cover up the top half of the letters as best you can, without reading it, with a rule or credit card -- or get someone to do it for you if that's a problem. Try to read it. You'll make out some of the words, but you'll miss a few along the way... slowing you down somewhat.
Now do the same thing except cover up the bottom half and read. You should be able to read just as easily as you normally do, with far fewer errors.
Strange how the mind works...
Incidentally, I've always loved anagrams... I love games like Scrabble and Boggle... and all sorts of word games and puzzles. "Hi group, my name is HSO -- I am a wordaholic." Anyway, I had no trouble reading that entire passage above. It's not much different than reading posts on a message board frequented mostly by teens. Horrible atrocious spelling... but, I digress.
[This message has been edited by HSO (edited July 15, 2004).]
Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :
This is oddly familiar. I think it's because we have posted this already?
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
Yes, there was a thread about this a while back.
Posted by rjzeller (Member # 1906) on :
HSO...
...maybe that's how speed-readers work? If you only look at half the letters then it should only take you half as long to read it....
All I know is I can't seem to get 'teh' and 'the' to come out right. Oh well...I'm sure the editors won't mind. Right???
Right?
Posted by Eric Sherman (Member # 2007) on :
I don't think it has anything to do with havign fat fingers. I've played piano for 11 years, and I play guitar and bass, so I have very dexterious fingers. But I still goof up all the time. I think it mostly has to do with our brain thinking faster than were typing.
Posted by Gen (Member # 1868) on :
Speed reading means you don't look at the letters at all, you look and recognize the overall shape of the word. If you hit a word you don't see often or don't know it pulls you out of it, though... (For me at least. I'm not in particularly good practice right now, but once upon a time I read Tale of Two Cities in three or four hours.)
Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :
This is an urban myth. I'm too lazy to look it up again, but there was apparently no such research conducted at Cambridge, and most experts believe that the idea presented is far too simplistic anyway, and that the overall shape of the word (e.g. positions of ascenders and descenders, and locations of loops) is quite important.
Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :
Phonominal, that's the word. I'll have to find my English to German thing like that it's quite entertaining. Also there is one like that without vowels but it's harder.
Posted by Robyn_Hood (Member # 2083) on :
Please do. A friend of my dad showed it to me several years ago and I never got a copy. It really makes you think about writing and language.
Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :
I don't care whether it is a myth or not, I'm going to use it to justify my typing!
Tknahs!
Posted by TruHero (Member # 1766) on :
I think a law suit is in order. I am going to sue Carl's Jr. for giving me FFS. Do you think it will work?