Interesting...

[rwfromxenon]

Acocdrnig to an Cmabrigde Uinervtisy sutdy, the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dosen't mttaer, the olny thnig thta's iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Pertty amzanig, huh?

[Oliver]

amazeing as hell

[sonneveld]

from slashdot

... was circulated to the University of British Columbia's Linguistics department. An interesting counter-example resulted:

"Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr."

As demonstrated, a simple inversion of the internal characters results in a text which is relatively hard to decipher.

- Nick

[Andrew_Baker]

I don't know what they're trying to prove, because I was able to read that text at only half of my normal speed. I would say that the original study's claims are not false, but that they only apply to certain people. While some would find text like this to be indecipherable, I'm pretty sure that others wouldn't have much problem.

To add to this, I should also mention that I have no problems reading backwards and/or upside-down. So, I think that people who can do this will have an advantage.