Typoglycemia

To those who commented on how my spelling had deterioriated during my time in the States, I have only this to say:

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.

Well, actually, I have more to say - now that I've done a bit more research on typoglycemia, which according to Wikipedia is: Typoglycemia is the lighthearted name given to a purported recent discovery about the cognitive processes behind reading written text. While the bit about the Cambridge research is an urban legend, there is some truth about the phenomenon (as those of you who read it would understand - and isn't it funny how much easier it is to understand the faster you read it?). Typoglycemia apparently first came to light with a letter to New Scientist magazine from a Graham Rawlinson in which he discussed his Ph.D. thesis:

In a puiltacibon of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon. Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work.The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang.

I just enjoy reading this stuff now - and looking for new word combinations. And thanks to the Stephen Sachs site, you can type your own text and have it jumbled for you: Tihs is smoe txet I julmbed uisng a tool I funod on the web. Cool hey?