word by any other shape . . .

In 1976, Graham Rawlinson, a researcher at Nottingham University, conducted an

experiment to uncover what information readers get from letters and words when

reading. He had volunteers read sentences in which the letters in the words were

jumbled except for the first and last letters. For example, the word important would

be spelled inrmoatpt, with the initial letter i and final letter t in the right places but

all other letters mixed up or (to use the scientific term) randomized.

What Rawlinson discovered was surprising: People could read and comprehend

the jumbled words almost as easily as unjumbled words. The experiment showed,

Rawlinson wrote in New Scientist magazine, “that randomising letters in the middle

of words had little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the

text.”

Try this experiment yourself. Read the following paragraphs at normal speed. See

whether you can understand the words as easily as you can understand words

that aren’t jumbled.

 Rseaerch icntidaes taht the oerdr of the ltteers in a wrod dnsoe’t mettar. Waht

relaly mtteras is the frist and lsat leettr in the wrod. If tehy are in the rhgit palce,

you can raed the wdors.

 Wehn you raed, you dno’t raed evrey leettr in ecah wrod. You look at the wrod

as a wlohe.

If you’re a typical reader, you were you able to read the paragraphs without any

trouble. This experiment suggests that

 ✓ You read words as a whole when you read, not letter by letter.

 ✓ The first and last letter of a word may be the most important letters for recogniz-

ing a word because these letters define the word’s shape more than the others,

and word shapes matter in reading.

 ✓ Context plays a role in reading. The words on either side of a word provide

meaning to the word, and you can often tell what a word means by reading the

words beside it.

 ✓ If a word is familiar to you, you’re capable of recognizing it even if it’s

misspelled.