Scrambled Spelling: Does It Matter?

Almost everyone has seen the following so-called discovery about English:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh 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 is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

This so-called discovery has primarily been used by spammers to evade software that detects words that signal spam.

As an excuse for misspelling English, it is invalid.

First, all the words shorter than four letters must be spelled correctly.

Second, the message must be simple and contain familiar words. The message above further compensates for its misspellings because the message's content is echoed in the message's form.

Third, and most importantly, you will notice that these misspellings are carefully structured. For example, "Aoccdrnig" keeps far more of the basic structure of the word than, say "Anircocdg" would have. "Rscheearch" is a very disciplined misspelling compared to "rrhcscaeeh."

Finally, no one who wishes to be taken seriously scrambles letters or misspells words deliberately. Correct spelling is still a mark of both courtesy and prestige.

Here's what I think would be really interesting research: Just which misspellings are easier to overlook? The ones that retain the silhouette of the word? The ones that keep three to five final letters in their appropriate spaces, as "rscheearch" does? Or the ones that never move a letter more than two spaces, as "Aoccdrnig" does? In short, how DO we recognize a word? And do our recognition patterns depend on our individual learning styles?

Electronic References: DOI

APA has dropped the requirement that electronic references include the database (such as OVID or PsycInfo).

The source of this new guideline is http://www.apastyle.org/elecmedia.html:

"With the exception of hard-to-find books and other documents of limited circulation delivered by electronic databases, the database name is no longer a necessary element of the reference. This change is made in the interest of simplifying reference format."

The APA has published (in PDF format only) a 24-page "booklet" on electronic references (copyright 2007) that is available for $11.95. I have purchased it. It doesn't say too much that is new except to suggest what are called Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).

APA has added a recommended element to an electronic reference: the DOI or Digital Object Identifier. I have tried to learn whether RefWorks automatically inserts the DOI, and I believe that it does. In any case, I quote below from the APA web site:

"Direct readers as closely as possible to the source you used. Along with this general principle, consider these guidelines for citing sources:

"1. All content on the Internet is prone to being moved, restructured, or deleted, resulting in broken hyperlinks and nonworking URLs in the reference list. In an attempt to resolve this problem, many scholarly publishers have begun assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to journal articles and other documents.

"A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet. When a DOI is available, include the DOI instead of the URL in the reference. Publishers who follow best practices will publish the DOI prominently on the first page of an article. Because the DOI string can be long, it is safest to copy and paste whenever possible. Provide the alphanumeric string for the DOI exactly as published in the article. When your article is published and made available electronically, the DOI will be activated as a link to the content you are referencing.

"The DOI may be hidden under a button labeled 'Article,' 'Cross- Ref,' 'PubMed,' or another full-text vendor name. Readers who wish to look up the source can then link to either the actual article, if they have authorized access, or an abstract and an opportunity to purchase a copy of the item.

"If the link is not live or if the DOI is referenced in a print publication, the reader can simply enter the DOI into the 'DOI resolver' search field provided by the registration agency CrossRef.org and be directed to the article or a link to purchase it."

Adjectives Again

In one of the blogs I follow, I read this item:
“A report in the Gloucester Citizen,” writes John Gray, “about a traffic accident said that ‘Mr Brown died of multiple and fatal injuries.’ I suppose you can die of nonfatal injuries?"

Then I wondered: What if the newspaper had written, “Mr. Brown died of multiple fatal injuries.” Would that sentence mean that two or more of his injuries were such as to cause death? I suppose that situation is possible.

But the newspaper could have written simply, “Mr. Brown died of multiple injuries.” If he died of them, they were fatal.

By the way, the Gloucester Citizen, a U.K. paper, evidently follows the British habit of leaving out the period after “Mr.” Hmmm. That dropped period is a thrifty idea that never caught on here in the colonies.

Short Before Long

"None of the ingestions resulted in more than moderate clinical effects or death."

So reads the final sentence of an abstract in the journal Human Clinical Toxicology. That sentence illustrates the pitfalls of writing a series whose first item consists of many words. Readers are not sure where the "trunk" of the sentence ends. Is the trunk of the sentence "None of the ingestions resulted in more than"?

If so, then ingesting the substance never caused more than death.

Is the trunk of the sentence "None of the ingestions resulted in more than moderate"? If so, then ingesting the substance never caused more than moderate death.

Is the trunk of the sentence "None of the ingestions resulted in"? If so, then ingesting the substance never resulted in death or in more than moderate clinical effects--which would have been a good way to write the sentence.

When a series ends a sentence, it is wise to order that series from short item(s) to long.