For those obsessed with spelling

There is a catch. It definitely works with sight readers, like me. I suspect it would be more difficult for those who are primarily phonetic readers. It probably also depends on which language and which alphabet you are reading. I'm pretty sure it would not work in Hebrew.

Oh yawn! Yet another myth and "bad science" piece purporting to be "research" that has grown arms and legs over the nine years since it first appeared to the point where no-one can state with any accuracy where it actually came from.

An example of the fallacy of the theory is look at the words that are supposed to be "research" and "amazing" - the theory falls down because those words are incorrectly spelt. Subsequent linguists who took the idea and actually did some real research came to different conclusions. See link HERE

But the main considerations in the understanding of what you see in that text are: first, the relative simplicity of the words used (try a similar exercise with complex vocabulary and you'll see the difference); second, the predictablility of the content allows you to guess what's coming next anyway; and third, although there is transposition of the letters of some of the words (but by no means all of them), the grammatical structure remains intact and it is that which significantly helps the understanding. Had the grammatical structure been altered, we would again have struggled to some degree or another in our ability to understand.


Iris, you are completely correct about Hebrew.

And since it appears that in 20 years time we'll all be writing in Textspeak, the whole issue is pretty much moot anyway.

C U L8R

Thanks for posting that Will. This is a dyslexic's dream!
(Fiona's link was interesting indeed.)
Best,
Todd

Fiona,
can't wait for the next Willowbog experience on a Saturday night. You can explain it clearly then.
Regards,
Andy.