Re: A stupid text trick - Example of the redundancy of English text

From: Richard Heathfield (dontmail_at_address.co.uk.invalid)
Date: 09/17/03 

Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 06:13:40 +0000 (UTC)

David Taylor wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote on Tue, 16 Sep
> 2003 21:57:50 +0000 (UTC):
>> LVB wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, although I can understand the text, it takes me stncigflinaiy
>>> longer to do so than when reading the unscrambled text. I wonder how
>>> much is actually due to our understanding of the context, rather than
>>> the redundancy mentioned above?
>
> I figured out the first text almost instantly. In fact looking at it
> briefly I could 'see' the correct words, it was quite strange.
>
>> Let's find out, with some semi-randomly chosen text. (Hint: people like
>> Doug Gwyn will recognise this easily, even in its mangled form.)
>
> This was fairly easy for me too, except for a few words.
>
>> The need for a sgilne caellry deefind saadnrtd had aeirsn in the
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> That threw me for a second, but once I figured that out I got the all the
> rest as I read it, except for two.

In other words, you acquired a context.

>
>> cimmnotuy due to a radilpy eadinnpxg use of the pagimmnorrg laaggnue
>> and the vaeirty of deffiinrg taalnorstr iaeeilmmnnoptts taht had been
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> I'm not quite sure what that says. The first word means nothing to me,
> the second is probably "implementations".

Yes. The first is - um, let me check! ...

It's "translator". :-)

>
>> and were being deeelopvd.
>>
>> I don't know about you, but I find that quite tricky to read, even though
>> quite a few of the words happened to come out unscathed.
>
> Just those four words, really. The rest I found fairly easy to
> understand.

I think Michael Amling has a point, that my /sorting/ the letters rendered
it more difficult to read than a random order would have done. It's a
sufficiently off-the-wall idea that I... well, ... hmmm. Never mind, for
now. 

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
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