Just for Laughs

by Debbie Kerr, The Quill Editor

Since it is the season for giving, I thought that I would share some of the "fun stuff" that I have received in the last several months.

Word Shapes

Many years ago I attended a workshop that Celia Clark gave about how people learn. She said that people find it easier to read text when they can easily see its shape. This theory explains why it is easier to read text that is in "Mixed Casing" than entirely in "UPPERCASE".

This theory is taken one step further in an email that has been circulating (I received it from several sources). The premise of the email is that people can still recognize a word as long as the word starts with the correct first letter and ends with the correct last two letters.

In an attempt to verify its authenticity, Carol Lawless discovered that, although it may be an urban legend, it may be based on a grain of truth. It apparently comes from a letter that was written to New Scientist magazine by someone who did research into the topic at Nottingham University in the 1970s.

The following is purported to be an excerpt from that original letter:

"Randomising letters in the middle of words had little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. Indeed one rapid reader noticed only four or five errors in an A4 page of muddled text. This is easy to denmtrasote. In a puiltacibon of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon. Work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work. The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang."

Can You Figure This Out?

Carol Lawless submitted the following sample of some "interesting" instructions.

If you find other samples of questionable documentation, please submit them to me at quill@stc-soc.org.