If Words Could Talk
By Bill E. Brock

Raed to Tnhik

If you recall, in the last episode of the jumbled letter reading column, there was a puzzle. True or false: In the following statement, all four-letter words have repositioned letters.

Me tlak him soon. Me tlel you mroe. (Clal eidotr for cerorct awsenr.)

Well, my editor let me know in editorese that NO ONE called, not even a rambling reader to complain about The Acorn ink that rubs off on your hands, clothes and the driveway. Sometimes, it’s so bad that The Acorn leaves skid marks.

Last time I briefly mentioned Dr. Graham Rawlinson, who had completed his thesis The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition at Nottingham University in the United Kingdom of England in Great Britain, which is about 130 miles from the Isle of France.

The doctor’s dissertation created absolutely no interest among his colleagues. It took the World Wide Web and David Harris of salon.com to circulate the following paragraph demonstrating the theory that as long as the first and last letters of a word are in the correct place, the rest can go anywhere.

"…it deosn’t mtater in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. . .the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

Dr. Rawlinson told me, "I think there is interest in my research now because people are more interested in thinking and thinking about thinking."

He’s written several books including "How to Invent Almost Anything," which he co-authored with David Straker, former creativity and quality manager for Hewlett Packard.

Now, I know there are some unique theses like the study of belly button lint in innies and outties and why it’s normally blue. Plus, according to the Department of the Interior, it’s illegal to import or export naval fluff without a permit. This procedure is so nitpicky that it’s spawned a robust blue market of smugglers of belly button lint, lint boxes, lint brushes and lint removers which sell for up to $25 and hold up to 12 pounds of personal lint.

You might be able to spot some of these underworld smugglers because they have bellies the size of Iowa. But, the joke’s on us. We snicker and think they got this way from eating the combined weight of a Little League team in Cheetos dipped in Velveeta cheese but, nay, class, they are professional belly button lint carriers.

Back to Dr. Rawlinson in West Sussex, please.

It seems the university showed him the money––if he would pursue eye movements and reading. But he could see that the eye movement machine kept breaking down and he needed a new topic fast. "Computers were fairly new, so I developed experiments about reading based on all the thinking and reading I had done. Letter placement was just one of several experiments related to reading."

Your faithful columnist meanwhile discovered that there are supposedly 26 letters in the alphabet. I’ve never really kept score, but I’ve most likely used all of them at one time or another.

However, a few, especially the consonants (everything other than a,e,i,o,u), are constantly complaining about having to follow vowels, according to the National Association of Talking Words, a group based in Spokane.

According to Merrill Verbatim, vowels are smart. I have no idea what sort of testing supports this theory and I really didn’t want to ask Merrill for fear it would cause him to smear mayonnaise on his head, claiming that it made his brain larger.

But Merrill vows that vowels have learned that if they’re put on "time out," words sound terrible such as dyslxc, which is also slobovokian for "I would like the six-inch take-out eel pie." Put them back in (I mean the vowels) and it becomes the silky sound of cixelsyd, which means "I would also like a large bag of Cheetos, please."

I had to regale the doctor with my knowledge of reading so I told him I had read that 50 percent of what we read is done with the same 100 words. He was so astounded at the extent of my knowledge about communication that he was speechless.

When I slyly mentioned this fact to my editor, his comment in editorese was, "That’s why your column is such an easy read, no doubt."

While I’m thinking about that one, pass the Cheetos, please.