The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid

A friend sent me the following text recently. It highlights a few things for me. Firstly, it's definitely a good idea to have spell check turned on at all times and secondly, I can now see why it's so easy for spammers to side-step unsophisticated anti-spam filters and still ensure their invitation for 'pneile elnargmenet' is understandable for the recipient. Food for thought...

“The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid -- aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl 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. Amzanig huh?”

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 13, 2005
  But its not "real" research though... http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp and http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1317533 show that this has been doing the rounds for a while.
  Now if anyone could really tell me why this works... and point me to an explanation or research paper.....