Can you read this?

No Prbolem. Intreseting psot.

I found I could easily read first time through at normal seepd.

Spock

Yep.
I can read it no problem.
A friend told me that if the first and the last letters are correct, the sentense still can be understood.

I'm sure that it gives a spelling nazi a twitch, however.

Thanks for reading and commenting, fellas. I snuck in a little extra facet as a little experiment - did either of you even notice that I'd written the word 'normal' as 'nomral' in the 'plain text' section?

Even after such a short familiarisation period, you might have adapted to not even notice the 'dbieeratle msiatke'.

Cheers!

Rich

quote:

did either of you even notice that I'd written the word 'normal' as 'nomral' in the 'plain text' section?

If you did I haven't noticed.
I have a tendency to tranpose letters and I don't even see it.

Accurate spelling and grammar is certainly not necessary for communication, but it sure does make language beautiful for its own sake.

Hmm,

Just got to thinking, are there any words in any language that are anagrams of each other AND have the same first and last letter? If so, then it would be possible that the messed-up version would be ambiguous, as it could 'translate' back to one of two (or more)different 'roots'.

Any wordsmiths out there know of such a collection of words?

Joe - not advocating that we should go around jumbling up letters for the sake of it, but it certainly interests me that we can read this mess so easily.

Kuma - maybe not so bad that you transpose the odd letter - this shows it won't impede comprehension - just don't get the first or last letter wrong!

Cheers!

Rich

Good point NTT. This is interesting but shouldn't be regarded as a licence to throw spelling and grammar out the window. Correct spelling and grammar are the best way of maximising the chances of getting your message across.

I'm sure there must be loads of words like you mention but unfortunately I can't think of any smart examples offhand. Fiend and fined, board and broad etc. Confusing penis and pines could have interesting consequences.

Hi Tom,

Arf! Good examples - I couldn't think of any words straight off the top of my head earlier, but then it occurred to me that in Bath there is a road (leading to Sainsbury's) called Pines Way - I certainly did a double take and had a smirk when I first went there!!

Yes, this wasn't meant as a justification of using incorrect spelling, but its good to know that if you do jumble up a few letters its not the end of the world.

I would guess that in most cases, the context and structure of the language should still make it possible to unravel the correct sentence:

The fnied fnied the barod for atctanikg his peins with a barod mdae form a from of tere kwonn as the peins!!

I'll get my coat...



Rich.

I thought it was just the normal level of competence found on this forum.

Hi Folks,

Another little test I sneaked into the above text. Did you find that you had trouble with the word 'researcher' more than any other in the original jumbled-up text? You may have read it as 'research' and wondered why it apparently said 'a research at Cambridge' rather than 'a researcher at Cambridge'.

That particular word doesn't end in the r that it should do, to comply with the rule for keeping first and last letter in place, but instead ends in h which may have made your brain resolve the word 'research' instead of 'researcher'.

Again, I'll get my coat - I clearly need to get out more...

Regards,

Rich.

Yup sure did!!!

My flow was completely broken up by the word 'researcher'.

Amazing!!!

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

Yes, both the puzzle and the brain are pretty impressive!

Now I'm angry at myself because I realise I also 'broke' the word 'researcher' when I was fiddling with it - it should have the letter e three times and it only has it twice.

Now I'll never be quite as confident that the reason it gave you trouble was because of the last letter being wrong, the wrong number of letters, or a bit of both. Maybe I'll have to wait 6 months and try this concept out again!

Best regards,

Rich.