from my inbox

[Lynne Murphy]

Since I'm on the digest, it's possible that this has already been pointed
out by someone who's not digesting, but this "Cambridge University study"
is an urban myth.  There's a Cambridge University site debunking it:

<http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/>

The site is not very user-friendly in its organization, but it contains
lots of useful information, such as:

"This is clearly wrong. For instance, compare the following three sentences:

1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in
Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir

2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay
pneosenirs

3) A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who
deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur

All three sentences were randomised according to the "rules" described in
the meme. The first and last letters have stayed in the same place and all
the other letters have been moved. However, I suspect that your experience
is the same as mine, which is that the texts get progressively more
difficult to read. If you get stuck, the sentences are linked to the
original unscrambled texts.

Hopefully, these demonstrations will have convinced you that in some cases
it can be very difficult to make sense of sentences with jumbled up words.
Clearly, the first and last letter is not the only thing that you use when
reading text. If this really was the case, how would you tell the
difference between pairs of words like "salt" and "slat"? "
...

I get this e-mail from students at least once a year, and try to use it as
a Teaching Moment, but, oh, it's getting repetitive.

L

--On 17 September 2008 18:30 -0700 "JAMES A. LANDAU Netscape. Just the Net
You Need." <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM> wrote:

>> fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
>>
>> Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
>>
>> i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
>> The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
>> Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a
>> wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be
>> in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed
>> it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
>> lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I
>> awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it
>>
>> Barry Auger
>> Hoe! Hoe! Hoe! Gardening Services Ltd
>> Email barry at hoehoehoe.ca>
>
>
>
> _____________________________________________________________
> Netscape.  Just the Net You Need.



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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