Holistic

I received this in an e-mail. Don’t know if it is true.

According 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 porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.Ins’t taht amzanig?

E-Mail in response…

This can be expanded upon. I have found that if you practice looking at the whole page at once and not focus on the letters you can tell if there are typos on the page or not. You may have to read each word after that to identify which precise words are misspelled. I’ve been practicing this proof reading trick for a long time and find that 99% of the time it works. I learned about this from a former landlady in Boston who typed up papers for grad students. She could look at the page ONCE, and then watch soap operas while her fingers did the work, without looking at the page again. She typed 250 words per minute flawlessly. What a racket she made. Told me that she didn’t actually “read” the paper and didn’t know what the content was about when she had finished. Photographic mind, I guess. But it illustrates what the mind can do.Mark Jacobson



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.