Is it true that only the positions of the first and last letter in a word matter, the rest can be scrambled?

Question

I read this sometime ago,> Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at> Cmabridge uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer> in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod> are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht> frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit> pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses> and you can sitll raed it wouthit> porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not> raed ervey lteter by it slef but the> wrod as a wlohe.I'm guessing that the Cambridge research probably doesn't exist, but is it true that we can normally understand a sentence whose letters are scrambled in this way?

Answer 1

Yes and No.

One issue that comes to mind is when multiple words are spelled with the same letters and have the same initial and final letters, such as alerted/altered and bared/beard/bread. In these cases, the order of the letters does make a difference.

While it is true that skilled readers do not have to decode (read each letter of) every word that they read. When we recognize a word, we don't slow down and read every letter, we just keep going. This is why we'll sometimes miss a spelling mistake when reading over our work.

I think something else is happening here, though. When we come to an unfamiliar word, we often infer its meaning from context clues. By thinking about the meaning and syntax (structure) of the sentence, we are usually able to figure out the word or replace it with a near-synonym. When I get to the word "lteter" in the paragraph, I know that "letter" would make the most sense in context.

Readers use three cueing systems to figure out words. Looking at the first and last letter is a common example of using visual cues. That's just one fraction of reading, though. Skilled readers are also using meaning and syntax at the same time. This is not some strange visual phenomenon or some word-unscrambling super power. It's just all three or your cueing systems working together to read the passage.

Answer 2

Hi Jody,

I believe the Cambridge study is accurate. I have used this study and example to show what text may look like for dyslexic students and while context also can help determine decoding, many students I’ve had still innaccurately guess the words. However, as students with dyslexia, they likely don’t represent the national norm of readers used for the Cambridge study. ;-)

Linda T., M.Ed.

Reading Specialist