A condition that may be spreading...

[Christwriter]

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch taem 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 a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoiately cllaed Typoglycemia -

Amzanig huh? Yaeh and yuo awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt

CW

[Mvmarcz]

ha

yeah well it's just how the mind works

[Nyke]

I hate it when people hear something and think it's so cool without hearing details.

Click here, if you deem yourself worthy

the rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm...
the rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem

This sentence is, like the rest of the demonstration, strikingly easy to read despite being jumbled. As you have seen above, not all sentences distorted in the same way are as easy as this to read. What is it that makes this sentence so easy? My colleagues and I have suggested the following properties:

1) Short words are easy - 2 or 3 letter words don't change at all. The only change that is possible in a 4 letter words is to swap the order of the middle letters which doesn't cause too much difficulty (see 4).

2) Function words (the, be, and, you etc.) stay the same - mostly because they are short words, see (1). This really helps the reader by preserving the grammatical structure of the original, helping you to work out what word is likely to come next. This is especially crucial for reading jumbled text - words that are predictable are going to be easier to read in this situation.

3) Of the 15 words in this sentence, there are 8 that are still in the correct order. However, as a reader you might not notice this since many of the words that remain intact are function words, which readers don't tend to notice when reading. For instance, when people are asked to detect individual letters in a sentence, they are more likely to miss letters in function words.

Healy, A. F. (1976). Detection errors on the word The: Evidence for reading units larger than letters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 2, 235-242.

4) Transpositions of adjacent letters (e.g. porbelm for problem) are easier to read than more distant transpositions (e.g. pborlem). We know from research in which people read words presented very briefly on a computer screen that the exterior letters of words are easier to detect than middle letters - confirming one of the ideas present in the meme. We also know that position information for letters in the middle of words is more difficult to detect and that those errors that are made tend to be transpositions.

McCusker, L. X., Gough, P. B., Bias, R. G. (1981) Word recognition inside out and outside in. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7(3), 538-551.

One explanation of this property of the reading system is that it results from the fact that the position of an exterior letter is less easily confused with adjacent letters. There is only direction in which an exterior letter can move, and there are fewer adjacent letters to 'mask' an exterior letter. Both of these properties emerge very naturally from a neural network model in which letters are identified at different positions in an artifical retina.

Shillcock, R., Ellison, T.M. & Monaghan, P. (2000). Eye-fixation behaviour, lexical storage and visual word recognition in a split processing model.Psychological Review 107, 824-851.

The account proposed by Richard Shillcock and colleagues, also suggests another mechanism that could be at work in the meme. They propose a model of word recognition in which each word is split in half since the information at the retina is split between the two hemispheres of the brain when we read. In some of the simulations of their model, Richard Shillcock simulates the effect of jumbling letters in each half of the word. It seems that keeping letters in the appropriate half of the word, reduces the difficulty of reading jumbled text. This approach was used in generating example (1) above, but not for (2) or (3).

5) None of the words that have reordered letters create another word (wouthit vs witohut). We know from existing work, that words that can be confused by swapping interior letters (e.g. salt and slat) are more difficult to read. To make an easy to read jumbled word you should therefore avoid making other words.

Andrews, S (1996) Lexical retrieval and selection processes: Effects of transposed-letter confusability. Journal of Memory and Language, 35(6), 775-800.

6) Transpositions were used that preseve the sound of the original word (e.g. toatl vs ttaol for total). This will assist in reading, since we often attend to the sound of the words even when reading for meaning:

Van-Orden, G. C. (1987) A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading. Memory and Cognition, 15(3), 181-198.

7) The text is reasonably predictable. For instance, given the first few words of the sentence, you can guess what words are coming next (even with very little information from the letters in the word). We know that context plays an important role in understanding speech that is distorted or presented in noise, the same is probably true for written text that has been jumbled:

Miller, G. A., Heise, G. A., & Lichten, W. (1951). The intelligibility of speech as a function of the context of the test materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41, 329-335.

christwriter, get in The Box.

[MixedMyth]

That's hella creepy and yet really, really cool.

[PieceOfSkunk]

I subtubilublub pubrubefuberub Tuburubkubeyub Irubisubhub.

[Ezra]

Some people who can't manage to spell correctly online are going to take that as an excuse to not improve now. Granted, they usually leave out half the letters of a word, never punctuate, and mutilate the sentence's grammatical structure.. but still..

That is cool as hell... although I had to slow down a few times to unscramble the words. Again, quite neat.. but I wanted to claw my eyes out at the same time. /shudder. Typos.... /shudder.

[Crazy Chris]

I thought wrod was 'wood' a couple of times.

[LibertyCabbage]

quite cool but also old =/ i remember these kinds of threads on forums years ago =p

[Nutcracker]

This is how spam mail works.

[Yeahduff]

Odd. I just read about that at work. GET OUT OF MY MIND, CW!!!!!

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I had no problem reading that. Wow.

[Nicked]

Typoglycemia -

I spent a while trying to un-scramble that.

[Warren]

I thought you were doing phonetic spelling until I reread it.


Yikes.

[Dutch!]

Now you know what it's like reading primary kids' writing.

[Warren]

Now you know what it's like reading primary kids' writing.

So how come I always got red marks on my paper for misspelling? I apparently got the point across anyway.

[Dburkhead]

Jumbled according to the rules about first and last letters. Who here can read it?

A srahp pbore is bhorgut itno pmtroxiiy wtih the sepciemn sacurfe. The pbore is oleslctiad vecitrlaly naer its mhaanicecl rcsannoee fqcrueeny. As the pbore ligthly tpas the srufcae, the apudimlte of oiclaitslon is reeducd and the AFM uess tihs cnaghe in altdipmue in oerdr to tcrak the scfruae thpogpraoy. In aiiotddn to its atmilpdue, the pbore mooitn can be ccreathezirad by its pshae rvtiaele to a dvirnig otloascilr. The pahse sngail caehngs wehn the pbore ecoenurtns rnogies of dfinrefet citompooisn. Pshae sthfis are rtieeesrgd as bgriht and drak roneigs in psahe igames, cmablrpoae to the way hgihet cghaens are iiednctad in hiehgt iagmes.

[Tears]

Actually yes I can... it's not easy but I can do it... probably helps that my physics is reasonable though, also I'm a scrabble nut.

[Protectmyballs]

dfuiogniqun pinp gieopg oir ior[ gi ig[ihjg ihpghilbviluabfubk zjxbvlierun; iuhpvhe;io vo;iavhio;rnpirghirheiguoajklbfuayvgef jablfjkgilau iu 123456789

[MixedMyth]

Now you know what it's like reading primary kids' writing.

Oh god. My last job was scorring student essay tests. 4th graders.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaah....

In truth though, I was disturbed at how much better their spelling and grammer was when compared to many internet users. Creepy.

[Dburkhead]

Actually yes I can... it's not easy but I can do it... probably helps that my physics is reasonable though, also I'm a scrabble nut.

Then you're better than I am. I work with the hardware described and I bog down trying to read that.