Today while opening my email I came across a very interesting message from a friend. It was basically a message where the letters of each word were all scrambled. The first and the last letters were kept intact, but between them they were all mixed. Surprisingly enough I could read it perfectly. Below you will find the message. Can you read it?
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 rghi t 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.
They say that only 55 people out of 100 can read that way. I would believe this number to be higher (considering that I never found someone who could not read it). What do you think?
you need to remember that a large population of the world cant read or write so that might be a factor used to estimate 55 out of 100.
and yes i can read it just like a normal paragraph.
During a recent meeting I mis-scribbled a word “Upgraded”, as “Upardged” (caps are as I wrote it). As you can see, all of the letters are there. This is a meeting with a lot of discussion and I am often referencing other information while I capture quick comments, so I am almost “ghost writing”. Clearly on review I catch it so I am assuming my cognition is intact, but do you find it interesting that indeed I am writing out the jumbled word with the same logic (same beginning and end)?
Yeah. It’s not that amazing. It was on the back of a Chick-fil-a kid’s meal bag. Some kid probably made up that email and sent it to his friend, who sent it to his friend, who sent it to his friend, who sent it to his uncle, who sent it to his sister, who sent it to her son, who sent it to his baseball team, who’s coach sent it to… you get it. I bet 100% of people can read it. But it is kind of cool.
~Charlie
Well, I’m French and I was able to read it easily enough. The fact that, being an English teacher, I sepak, raed and wtire English everyday probably hpeled me a lot.
Just came across this today. I could read it but I know a friend who could not. He suffers from dyslexia which means that he cannot correctly read words that are formed normally much less those that are not. However, the 55 out of a 100 would refer to those who are using areas of the brain designed for pattern matching and not linguistic or litarary skills necesarily. Those who would have most difficulty would be those who have pattern matching problems with symbolic references, ie, letters and words, and similar patterns.
Many people today suffer from a minor form of dyslexia when it comes to certain words. Such as those most commonly miss-spelled (friends, believe, receive etc). This has led to the assumption that the brain reads words through pattern matching only rather then by symbol and pattern matching. However, the truth is that the brain registers words on a variety of different levels and 55 out of 100 people are using the full range of these levels, where as the other 45 may be lacking in one or more of them.
“…or litarary skills necesarily…”
At least you ought to attempt to be accurate with the words you write as the author of Daily Writing Tips!
I could read 😉 uhuu Lol
I don’t think this is true, I can read this paragraph without any problem, why? because the words are arranged in sentences. try scramble 10 5-7 letter words and have your friends read it, they’ll sure have a hard time.
Well I am only just beginning high school, so only one word inthat entire passage hadn’t i seen before. That word was Cambridge.
I am not a native speaker but can easily read it. I think it depends on how you are knowledgeable about the subject. The opening sentences of the pragraph gives the clue that helps me to read the rest of the passage, even choosing a few key words from the sentence to extract the meaning of it. In the era of Internet, people reads much faster than those who had lived about a century ago.
I think that only 55 out of 100 people can read it because the other 45 who can not, are usually put off by the title of the email, because they can’t read it. Think about it, if you couldn’t read the title of something, would you be likely to open it and read it? Doubtful. That’s why no one can find anyone who can’t read it, because the people who can’t, generally won’t want to. The other 55 people will open it and read it because they can understand the title and they are therefore curious as to what the rest of the letter says.
The only reason most people don’t have any trouble is they’re all short words. Everyone will have a great deal of difficulty trying to read larger scrambled words. Ureadategrunds and duehginsitsid shorlacs wluod hvae ductiilffy reinadg untenuereqfd psylobiallyc txet.
Azmanig rscheearch. It gveis ereyvnoe a geart lsosen. I maen “dno’t eevr look at the sucrafe of atniynhg but yuo hvae to look dlpeey isidne it and to uesdnatnrd it ont jsut as waht it lkoos lkie btu waht deos it eaxtcly maen .
I could not even read what you wrote in your article yourself.
…Just kidding! 😉
Can you read this? Only 55 people out of 100 can
I couldn’t believe that I could actually understand what I was reading. The phenomenal power of the human mind, according to a research at Cambridge University It doesn’t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and the last letter be in the right place. The reset can be a total mess and you can still read it without a problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole. Amazing, yuh? Yeah and I always thought spelling was important! If you can read this forward it….
Good one not an issue to read this if you are always active …..
I think that it’s quite amazing that the human mind rearranges the letters in a comprehensible way. Being that I am only 11 and found no issue reading it through and through to is really something interesting. Nor did my eight year old sister have any problem. It would be funny to see what would happen if it was all in cap locks. Much harder I assume. I’m showing this to my friends and see how many have an issue. It would be a great experiment in class. Thanks. 😉
~Katie
It would be interesting to see how many of those people that were the subject of this study knew more than one language…people whose primary language isn’t english tend to memorize how words are written…many have problems writing recieve – receive
As with most simplistic memes of this kind, the “Cna Yuo Raed Tihs?” meme doesn’t bear scrutiny:
The first couple 2 letter words can’t be read – the F/L letters don’t remain the same.
i can ed this very clearly even if i am just 12 years old . maybe i am 1 of that 55 percent