Sapenikg of Rdaneig

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

This has made its way around for a few years now. "They" say that 55% of us can actually read this relatively easily. (I can, just a bit slower than normal.) The key is that the first and last letters must be correct.

If this is true--the 55% part, and the bit about reading the word as a whole, I have to wonder about the claims of the phonics devotees. Decoding--the phonetic deciphering of the word by parts--isn't apparently all that is going on.

I would bet, though, that struggling readers, or less practiced readers, are more often in the 45% than the 55%.

Hey, maybe I should test that.