Why do you trust that you understand this sentence?

Question

"Aoccdrnig to a rsceearch at an Elingsh 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 is at the rghit pclae."

Is religion a matter of trust? Even if we do call it "faith".

Dear "fifi" - Do you mean current topics, like a 4,000 year old manuscript.

Dear "acid" - Wow. Thanks for that input.

Answer 1

Ah, I remember that meme.

Here's a nice tidbit:
"This text circulated on the internet in September 2003. I first became aware of it when a journalist contacted a my colleague Sian Miller on 16th September, trying to track down the original source. It's been passed on many times, and in the way of most internet memes has mutated along the way. It struck me as interesting - especially when I received a version that mentioned Cambridge University! I work at Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, in Cambridge, UK, a Medical Research Council unit that includes a large group investigating how the brain processes language. If there's a new piece of research on reading that's been conducted in Cambridge, I thought I should have heard of it before..."
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

here's a do-it-yourself scramber:
http://www.lerfjhax.com/scrambler

and somebody who researched the meme:
http://www.bisso.com/ujg_archives/000224.html

I know it doesn't answer the question, but I thought it was funny.

Answer 2

Because the written word contains a degree of redundancy, which this particular sample relies upon.

It wouldn't work with a set of numbers, for example.

The sentiment isn't quite correct, though, as some words could produce anagrams which would shift meaning as well as potentially lose it. Only context would then remain to alert to a possible communication error.

The next stage of communication correction would be to re-use terms, corrected or uncorrected, in a message to the originator, to see if the response was consistent with the deduced meaning.

Spelling of English has drifted over the centuries, but older books are often produced in newer "corrected" editions, so we rarely notice. More insidiously, meaning drifts as well. We would no longer say "In the bowels of Christ" as Oliver Cromwell did.

Answer 3

If the first and last letters are right the brain re-arranges the other letters. It's been on Answers before. It's amazing isn't it. The last time I saw it I made the remark that we learn it from reading a lot of questions on Yahoo! Answers.

Answer 4

Interesting!

Answer 5

Cause I do understand what that said, it's a little thing called common sense. And some people on here that are always like "SPELL CHECK" need to get some.

Answer 6

The person that created this stupid piece of nonsense either has way too much time on their hands or thinks dyslexia is a normal human condition.

Answer 7

Because our brain only needs the first and last letters to comprehend reading words; our brain "fills in the blanks" so to speak.

Answer 8

This again?

Basically the story is that our eyes don't read every letter... we scan and understand perfectly as long as the first letter stays and the last letter stays.

(I didn't read the sentence when I wrote this either - I just recognized it from FIVE years ago.)

Answer 9

Because my interpretation of it makes sense and the way it appears is consistent with the way it would be written if my interpretation were true. Consistency...the surest road to truth.

Answer 10

Your presentation is proof positive one can see the truth even if man tries to befuddle matters.