The wrod as a wlohe

I stumbled upon the following text the other day whilst reading a BBC "Have Your Say" discussion on the topic "What is the best way to teach child literacy?":

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

The idea was interesting enough that I was curious to track down the alleged research. Trawling the internet, I realised this text has been doing the rounds for years. Eventually my Googling paid dividends (unlike Google shares) and I discovered the concept was derived from a PhD thesis by Graham Rawlinson.

I found several examples of scrabbled text which I was able to read without trouble. Curiously it became easier to read the more I accelerated my reading speed, presumably because I was relying more on word shape.

Crucial to word shape are ascenders and descenders - the letters which poke above or below the median: b d f g h j k l p q t y. An easy test of this is to put a big thick line through some words and see whether you can make anything of the result:

Scrabbled text may reveal that once we are proficient readers we rely on shapes of words, but it probably doesn't help in teaching children to read. In any event, if you’re interested in generating your own scrabbled text try this link.

I do read a lot of books for pleasure, but I don't often consciously employ speed reading for fiction, unless I’m driven to it by excessive Tolkien-like descriptions that span pages and drag out the narrative. I’m not fond of reading technical material, so this is when I employ my own home grown method of speed reading.

When I speed read I don't start at the top and scan left to right down the page. Instead I'll glance at paragraphs to see if they contain interesting words. Often I'll read backwards from an interesting word, or scan up the page. It's my own home brew technique, rather than something I've learnt from "how to speed read" guides. I'm left handed, and I wonder whether this why I reverse polarity: right to left, bottom to top. Perhaps I should have been born Chinese?

Meanwhile the whole topic has reminded me of something that really horrified me during the last US and UK elections. It seems it has become fashionable to analyse politician's speeches by counting the number of times words get repeated.

I suppose the “Word Cloud” concept originally gained popularity in blogland. This is the Wordle generated from The Barnum Effect (you can click on it to see it full size):

Word Clouds are great for blogs and T-Shirts but should they be used to decide which candidate or party runs the country? I jolly well hope not.