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Method of Reading Discovered
Scientists have discovered that the method our eyes use to process letters on a page is different than previously believed. Instead of assimilating one letter at a time our eyes actually lock on to two different letters simultaneously about half the time. "The team's results demonstrated that both eyes lock on to the same letter 53% of the time; for 39% of the time they see different letters with uncrossed eyes; and for 8% of the time the eyes are crossing to focus on different letters. A follow-up experiment with the eye-tracking equipment showed that we only see one clear image when reading because our brain fuses the different images from our eyes together."
Aoccdrnig to 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 a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
In other words, this study was flawed in the first place. Our eyes don't look at individual letters, they look at groups at a time. I learned this in high school....
That's pretty cool, but what about non-alphabetic systems, such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean? Does the physical act of reading depend at all on the unit of meaning we are scanning with our eyes? Not that the researchers should have done this in the same experiment, they're in England, so it makes sense for them to stick to the native language.
I've known for about 20 years that we don't focus on one letter. There are numerous books that show that we (at least those using Latin alphabets) look at the shape of the top half of the word rather than each letter. All this does is break down literacy to crossing eyes, etc. Not really new.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
You remember all that, the letter order doesn't matter when reading bit? (http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000840.php for a refresher).
It's always seemed pretty apparent to me that we don't reach letters in "correct order" by focusing only on a single one at a time. If that were the case things like speed-reading and scanning for content would be nearly impossible. Outside confirmation of this is nice however.
The real question is how much redundancy can we remove from printed words for faster information dispersal while still expressing things clearly. Sure, having everything spelled correctly and in long form is great for books for pleasure (art) but do we really need it for basic information sharing? Especially if doing so increases the time spent needlessly?
--- I do not moderate.
Yaeh, it's prttey amaizng taht as lnog as the begnning and the enidng of the wrod are coerrct taht you can raed it at alomst full speed.