According to a researcher (sic) at Cambridge University, it
doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only
important thing is that the first and last letter be at the
right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read
it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read
every letter by itself but the word as a whole. This text
circulated on the internet in September 2003. I first became
aware of it when a journalist contacted a my colleague Sian
Miller on 16th September, trying to track down the original
source. It's been passed on many times, and in the way of most
internet memes has mutated along the way. It struck me as
interesting - especially when I received a version that
mentioned Cambridge University! I work at Cognition and Brain
Sciences Unit, in Cambridge, UK, a Medical Research Council unit
that includes a large group investigating how the brain
processes language. If there's a new piece of research on
reading that's been conducted in Cambridge, I though