Doctor Who and Cho

So, you've all seen that thing about being able to read any word as long as the first and last letter are in the right place, right?

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

Of course, it's not really true. Your brain doesn't really do a Jumble-style descramble; instead it uses context and the clue of first-last letters to guess the right word. The paragraph is full of pretty short words, to start with, and it's coherent. Trying something like unnniiivtg or eeemnnnraittt - or Uvrtsneiiy, or even oedrr. Not so easy...

More interesting, the same process your brain uses to "un- scramble" such words can result in reading the wrong word altogether, even when the original word isn't scrambled, or even misspelled - just unexpected.

So yesterday, I read that "Doctor Who lost Cho's records..." I wasn't quite sure why that was page 2 news (is the show that popular?), and then the rest of the sentence tripped me and I saw the relative clause, but I was still thinking doctor from my first misread.

(source: Washington Post)