Copyright 2004 by http://www.organicgreens.us and Loring Windblad. This article may be freely copied and used on other web sites only if it is copied complete with all links and text intact and unchanged except for minor improvements such as misspellings and typos. The following paragraph came to me over
Internet a few years ago and I just recently dug it out again. It gives rise to a few questions, which I’ll get to shortly. In meantime, read along, both paragraphs, and then follow steps
Subject: The Power of Mind The paomnnehil pweor of hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr ltteers in a wrod are, olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer be at rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but wrod as a wlohe. Fcuknig amzanig huh?.
Translated, it reads thusly: The phenomenal power of human mind. According to a research at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter in what order letters in a word are, only important thing is that first and last letter be at right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because human mind does not read every letter by itself, but word as a whole. Amazing, huh?
Ok, you will be tested, so pay attention here. Were you able to read first paragraph fairly easily? With only a little bit of difficulty? With difficulty but, with perseverance, successfully? Or did you have to “sound out to yourself” each of misspelled words and then figure out its real meaning?
I cannot answer for you, and you need to be completely honest here. Honest with yourself, not with me. I really don’t care one way or other, although we’ll get further into that in a bit. Lets take a look at two examples and see where we’re going with this.
First, my sweetie, my wife June, and I are very different people in our understanding and interaction with world around us. The above paragraph gives some insights into both these differences and our perception, understanding and interaction with both ourselves and world around us.
June types words and phrases and at speeds of 80-85 wpm. She ignores advertisements on television, she carries on conversations with people while continuing to work and/or type and watching television, she types a document and usually is completely unaware of content of what she has typed, she is good at remembering words and names, not great with numbers – though she is a numerologist and deals with numbers and meanings. She also ‘tunes out’ commercials which show on TV. Her verbal and reading skills are superior. When she reads books she reads words and phrases. She reads 100-150 wpm and she carries her personal phone directory with her in printed form.
Loring (me) types individual letters of words at speeds of 100+ wpm. He knows everything he has typed and is able to make punctuation and word corrections “on fly” as he types. He prefers to have “white sound” (i.e., music) playing as he works, is easily and often distracted by TV and other people, sees details of all ads that play on TV, has difficulty at times with names of people and places including street where he lives, does most easy computations in his head, and remembers most peoples telephone numbers after just a few telephone calls. Loring learned Morse Code by identifying each individual characteristic of letters, not by “sound” of different letters and numbers, but still took Morse code at 30 wpm when most people 1) begin failing between 10 and 15 wpm, and, in order to get beyond 12-15 wpm must learn to identify distinctive “sound of each letter/character” because they are too fast to be able to count individual “dah’s and dit’s”. When he reads books he reads letters of words, spelling them out in detail to understand what word is. In spite of this he reads between 500 and 1000 wpm. His verbal and reading skills are superior.
