Archives
1:26:00 PM EDT
Hearing Skinwalker -- Robbie Robertson
Good News for Bad Typists
The blogosphere is afire with a particular paragraph which purports to provide evidence that not even spectacularly bad spelling gets in the way of understanding English. The paragraph reads such:
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
The provenance of this information is suspect -- the "Elingsh uinervtisy" in question has not been confirmed, although another variant of the message lists it as Cmabrigde. Nevertheless folks are chattering about it all over the place (here and here and here, for starters).
Personally I don't know why this is suddenly big news, since anyone who's received spam e-mail in the last year knows perfectly well that mixed up letters still make for legible words, since spammers are intentionally misspelling "Viagra" in all its many variants to get past the spam filters. Not to mention that anyone who's ever IMed anyone who types faster than their fingers can spell often has to have entire conversations werhe corerclty sepelld wrods are a rritay.
I should note that just because you don't have to spell correctly to be understood, doesn't mean you shouldn't spell correctly. Good spelling is a sign of an ordered mind, which potential bosses prefer. If I couldn't consistently spell correctly, for example, I'd be out of a job. And that would be dpresesnig.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | 
digg this
-
Another person commented:
But, I am sure just like everything else in this country, correct spelling will be disreguarded and viewed as unnessary and a waste of time.
Oh, that's very funny. I disregarded it at first, but then I read it more closely. :::snicker:::: -
Typing "about me" I learned it had to be 1000 characters or less. This was a problem before going to Office I retyped only to find out i was still way over limit. On going to Office I set it to tell me amount of character and typos. Then, it would not paste into "about me" so i hit cntl V and there it was.
I do have one question, for now anyway, how to add graphics. I do all my own graphics only problem so far is how to get my graphics on here. They are in jpg format -
-
I'm new to this blog journal thing but the one thing I figured out fast was to write my entry in my email, spell check it, copy it then paste it to my journal. Feeling proud of myself for figuring that out...lol
9/19/03 10:58 AM