Can You Raed Tihs?

An aoynmnuos raeedr sumbtis: "An interesting tidbit from Bisso's blog site: Scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place. Word of mouth has spread to other blogs, and articles as well. From the languagehat site: 'Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro.' Jamie Zawinski has also written a perl script to convert normal text into text where letters excluding the first and last are scrambled."

Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

Quick! Someone go register goaste.cx, micorsoft.com, ssdlhoat.org...etc.

Actually, does this work well with letter pairs like, "th ch wh sh qu?" I forget what those are called.

Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

Actually, does this work well with letter pairs like, "th ch wh sh qu?" I forget what those are called.

Digraphs? [reference.com]

Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

Actually, does this work well with letter pairs like, "th ch wh sh qu?" I forget what those are called.

The reason it DOES work well with those letter pairs is that they aren't familiar at all in reverse. You're more likely to udnerstand their juxtaposition as what it's supposed to be, because you're used to it being one way.

Where it DOESN'T work as well is when you begin breaking up complex phonemes or diphthongs in short words. Konw what I'm sayin'?

Bit of a simplistic article...

The best example I can think of for comprehension failure with jumbled text is with ordered interdependant phonemes. For instance - "eau", or "ough".

Turhgoh = Through

A topic that does not seem to have had much coverage in this article is the actual iconic visual recognition that our brains appear to use in word recognition.

Obviously each word approximates a patterned rectangle (serif fonts emphasize this further) with occasional outliers (ie. t, y, l, and any other letters that protrude above or below the base rectangle).

People with poor eyesight rely on this fuzzy but fast recognition frequently. In fact there is a classic psych experiment based around displaying a word that iconically is very similar to another word, while simultaneously presenting a context that implies the second word, and asking the subject to record the word. The subject mis-records the word roughly 90% of the time.

Q.

Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

tripthong: falling flat on your face after getting out of bed the morning after a particularly successful date.

Rmiends me of...

Pron

Cna't beileve I was the frist to say it...

Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

I personally find it more creepy that people would be trying for goatse.cx .

What?!? No "Frist Psot"?

I can't believe it! I was assuming that someone, someone out there (especially the first poster) would do it!

Come on, you slacker trolls!

(ethighy-ftifh psot!)

Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"?

"Frist Psot" was rejected by the Lameness Filter, which was specially audjestd for this story. Note that the Slashdot spell-uncheck program was also adjusted to aollw the correct spellings of the non-scrambled wdors in the story to be let thourgh.

(tihs siht is too mcuh fun! sotp me!)

Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"?

What?!? No "Frist Psot"?

Given the nature of the story, I'd expect the trolls to end up posting a properly spelled "First Post" message. :)

Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"?

Let's see if I can get this over with in one fell swoop:

all your bsae are boleng to us
In Seviot Rsuisa Words Srcmable You
Imangie a sbcramled bwelouf ctsuler
Tihs mhigt be big eunogh to hold all my mp3's if I smalrcebd tehm (remmeber that one?)
cehck out this lnik [gaotse.xc].

Did I miss any?

Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"?

You only missed one obvious one (to me): i gesus it deonst mtaetr taht sashlodt eidorts cnat selpl !

Re:What?!? No "Frist Psot"?

I, for one, wcelmoe our new dyselxic oervlrdos!

Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

I noticed that compression is worse using scrambled text:

[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ ./scrmable.pl genesis.txet
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ gzip g*
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ ls -l
total 304
-rwxr-xr-x 1 anthonym staff 63830 Sep 15 16:33 genesis.text.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 anthonym staff 84945 Sep 15 16:36 genesis.txet.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 anthonym staff 1396 Sep 15 15:56 scrmable.pl
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ gunzip g*
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$ zip genesis.zip g*
adding: genesis.text (deflated 70%)
adding: genesis.txet (deflated 60%)
[anthonym@uniblab scrbameld]$

Interesting. Anyone have an explaination for tihs?

Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

By randomly scrambling the letters, you're eliminating a lot of the redundancy.

Huffman compression would be unaffected though, as it works on a per character basis.

Compression worse...

That's easy. Let's say you have a text file that consists of 14,000 instances of the word "begat". This compresses to a file that simply indicates "repeat 14,000 'begat '".

Now, after you scrmable it, it's got equal quantities of begat, beagt, baget, baegt, bgeat, and bgaet. It's not so easy to compress any more.

Essentially, you're increasing the entropy of the file by a fair amount. Truly random data is not so easy to compress as english, because english has lots of order. Added disorder or entropy means compression is just not as easy.

Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?

My neighbor weighed your argument. He used a beige scale, and decided it was probably the heinous act of a foreigner to make such a statement. And you're weird. So rein in yourself, and remove the veil of ignorance, ye feisty cad!

Thou should forfeit karma, but that is neither here nor there.

Re:bah! real men only need 1 line

Uh huh, and you probably post to Slashdot by tapping on the ethernet jack with battery and a paper clip, right?

People who actually know how to program realize that while line noise one-liners are sometimes a cute party trick, it's a worthless way to program.

The more your Perl looks like static, the less well you have written it.

At Lsat!

Bad splelnig no logner nedes to hlod aynnoe bcak!

Re:At Lsat!

Bad splelnig no logner nedes to hlod aynnoe bcak!

As if that's stopped anyone on Slashdot before.

Re:At Lsat!

As if tath's stpoped aonnye on Sasldoht boeefr.

You cna't eevn get the fekucd up snleiplg rghit!!!

Re:At Lsat!

So it IS true! Dyslexics definitely has more fnu!

The bset prat

The best part of the pearl script is the copyright notice:

# Coyprgiht (C) 2003 Jamie Zawinski
#
# Premssioin to use, cpoy, mdoify, drusbiitte, and slel this stafowre and its
# docneimuatton for any prsopue is hrbeey ganrted wuihott fee, prveodid taht
# the avobe cprgyioht noicte appaer in all coipes and that both taht
# cohgrypit noitce and tihs premssioin noitce aeppar in suppriotng
# dcoumetioantn. No rpeersneatiotns are made about the siuatbliity of tihs
# srofawte for any puorpse. It is provedid "as is" wiuotht exerpss or
# ilmpied waanrrty.

Re:The bset prat

Uh oh, Jamie Zawinski has shown an interest in something. We have very little time before it is integrated into the standard xscreensaver loadout.

yeah...

and I, for one, wlcemoe our new dslyxeic ovlrerdos!

impruvd inglis

I like the proposed UN English language modifications to make English easier for everyone to learn!

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

Here you go

No need to open the terminal ... Jeff comes to the rescue!

http://jeff.zoplionah.com/scramble.php [zoplionah.com]

Re:Here you go

Yuor porgarm has a falw. It csnoiders pinctuouatn mkars as ltteers and tuhs any word wtih a pntctuuaion mark at the end wlil condeisr the fanil mark to be the lsat letter.

In the Sivoet Uonin

WRDOS SBRCALME YOU!

holy..

Holy FCUK!

FINALLY

Justification for the lack of spell checking on Slashdot...

Hmmm

So d__s t__s m__n t__t we d_n't n__d t_e m____e l____s at all?

Re:Hmmm

Okay, I know it's bad form to reply to one's own post, but I noticed something. When writting "letters", l____rs seems more recognizable than l_____s. Apparently plurals are handled by the brain as the word followed by the plural suffix. Interesting...

Re:Hmmm

I t___k y__r p__t is p___f t__t we d________y do n__d t_e m____e l_____s.





Read: I think your post is proof that we definately do need the middle letters.

Re:Hmmm

Bt we nd te ss fr te wd cs.

But we need the spaces, at least, for the word cues.

So how many "bits" of information can we strip from a sentence, on average, before we can no longer intuitively decipher it? The spaces give us information, but not as much as the letters themselves. Yet clearly the ordering of the letters contains much less information than the contents of a word's endpoints. This is odd stuff.

Re:Hmmm

ActuallyIHaveFoundThatWeDoNotNeedSpaces.

WeDoNeedPunctuation,AndSomeQueThatASpaceShouldBe Th ere.

IWasAbleToWriteASetOfScriptsThatWouldCapitalizeT he First
LetterOfEveryWord,ThenStripOutSpaces.IUseTh atScrip tToSend
TextPagesToMyCellPhoneToSaveSpace.

ToFollowUpOnYourIdea,WeCouldStripOutVowlesFromTh eM iddleOf
WrdsAndStllFndMstOfTheTxtRdbl.IThnkWeNdTo LveAnyAtT heBgngOr
EndOfTheWrdsThgh.

At the moment it takes a bit of extra thinking to do that though.

-Rusty

The Definitive Misspelling Post

I think your post is proof that we definately do need the middle letters.

But it's apparently not so definite which letters we need.

<sigh>

This doesn't work at all

Two reasons your message doesn't work without great effort:

1 - You've left out the letters, and thus our brain can't do the quick magic to "know" the words. The summary of the story worked really well, surprisingly well. But yours is hosed.

2 - There's no real context for your sentence, so it's even that much more difficult to guess quickly.

Re:Hmmm

" So d__s t__s m__n t__t we d_n't n__d t_e m____e l____s at all?"

No, the middle letters are still necessary. I find myself misreading all the time because my brain took in the first and last letter and read it as a word with similar spelling and length.

So I would hypothesize that the first/last letters along with the lengths of the words and a rough idea of what letters go in the middle are what our brains look for.

But this only comes with practice. English is my first language and I have read millions and millions of words in English in my lifetime so I am very used to taking in written information this way. But if I switch to reading something in French (for which I took for 11 years in school but never became fluent, mainly because I hated learning french) I still have to read each word carefully because I am not used to reading it.

So if some person who is just learning english looked at words with jumbled internals, I expect that they would have a terrible time trying to figure them out. Their brains have not read each word thousands of times so they still have to decode them letter by letter.