About

My name is Tina Roth Eisenberg. I am a 'swiss designer gone NYC'. swissmiss is my visual archive of things that 'make me look'. I am a graphic designer and run my own studio in Brooklyn. Contact me if you would like to team up, have a link suggestion or just want to say hello: submissions {at} swiss-miss.com.

stats


  • Locations of visitors to this page

« mini wood mustache on a stick | Main | 50 things I've learned in 50 years, a partial list in no particular order »

Comments

Ericson

I'm one of those who can, cool. Yeah, we read by the shapes of the word. You'll notice that in that paragraph shorter words are easier to read in a glance. The longer the word, the likelier it loses its word-shape, and becomes less readable.

gigi

that is crazy and i can't believe i read the whole thing - so interesting!

corine

my kids tells me that everyone can read this, not only half the population. Aawanyy, I'm not srue I tlod you bfoere but I am a gaert fan of yuor bolg.

Elaine Wilson

The reason this works is that one-, two-, and three-letter words are unaffected. These small words, articles, conjunctions, and prepositions, add so much to the context of a sentence that meaning is easy to infer.

A similar paragraph where even the smallest words were changed would be much, much harder to read.

marta

Actually this is quite old, they found it out about 1 1/2 years ago or so.

david

Wehn tihs fsrit cmae out a Caidanan utisreviny (srroy I hvae no lnik) sewohd taht if the ioiretnr lrettes are resreved the txet bemoces qtiue ulbadaerne.

When this first came out a Canadian university (sorry I have no link) showed that if the interior letters are reversed the text becomes quite unreadable. Random interior order is easier to read.

ksklein

hey, cool. i´m surprised how quick i could read this. and @ comment #1: actually i find it easier to read the long words.

rich

this is my proof that its not true.

Stsiienct hzehotesypid taht poolsgcyshit msesngaiidod nruumoes idnececins ivinlonvg alncesedot dopessiren.

ksklein

in your example you are right. but in the above one, the longer ones were easier to read.

Arlyn

Another aspect is context and common vocabulary. We could read Tina's example quickly because the context remained the same throughout the paragraph and the words were not challenging. Rich's example above (which I can't read) has no context and it uses unusual (long) words.

Mary Richmond

Actually this is so old I learned it in a speedreading class in elementary school in the 1960's.....

The comments to this entry are closed.