 The ability to understand words when the first and last letters are stable, but the middle letters are scrambled is known as “typoglycemia”. 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. * No such research was carried out at the University of Cambridge. 11 comments
 @neauoire i wonder how this holds up in languages with very long words that are composed of smaller words put together, like in german. maybe they can still read very long words as long as some of the letters in the middle, like the ones that make up internal word boundaries, are in the correct position as well? @typeswitch It might not work as well, in french it holds up somewhat. En Frniaacs, ca mahrce puotlt bein  @neauoire Attempt at a counter-example: Cctinooiseuns aonle cndsniioerg lmeiittage anmioely. @neauoire I always wonder, given how predictable English is, why we must type all of the letters rather than, say, a code along the lines of a court reporter. Or at least like in the back of magazines years ago: f yu cn rd this yu cn gt a gd job. I don’t want to negotiate every word, I want to type whole documents that then get “fixed” @kcoyle You might get a kick out of this: https://merveilles.town/@neauoire/112203061049964923 @neauoire I think one has to be literate to be able to have typoglycemia. Very surprised this was so easy to read. I am really bad at anagrams, but the first and last letter seem to nail it.  |
Gregory's Server
@neauoire but why does it work?