If it weren’t for junk mail, I’d get no mail at all, and this includes e-mail that arrives via cyberspace. Often, as with much of the unsolicited “snail mail” that comes courtesy of the Postal Service, the cyberspace stuff gets zapped without being opened. One small step for man, one giant step for mankind.

But occasionally, to get a sampling of the shopworn claptrap that is being passed around the Internet, I’ll bite. Such was the case this week with a message slugged “Very Imptorant.” It intrigued me because it came from a hopelessly conservative cyber pal who’d sooner utter a kind word about liberals in general and Hillary Clinton in particular than misspell a word; would sooner swallow a good dose of cod liver oil than send out, under his name, words so badly mangled. And so I was hooked.

Glad I was, too, for the item entertainingly makes a point that anyone who hacks out a living committing words to print discovers early on: When it comes to rectifying mankind’s garbled printed transmissions, the human brain is one mean clean editing machine able to overlook and make sense of the roughest of gobbledygook. Consider the mishmash, author unknown, offered by my cyber pal. Please.

“Aoccdrnig to rscheearch by 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 tatol 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. Amzanig, huh?”

Sure, you were put off by the misspellings. Who of even modest sensibilities wouldn’t be? And, understandably, you considered bailing out after getting about 10 words into the drill. (“Who needs this?” I can imagine you muttering. “If I had wanted scrambled eggs I’d have turned to the Jumble puzzle in the comics section.”) But you stuck with it. And you got the message, with no problem whatsoever, proevnig taht the edtinig protion of yuor brian wroks just fine.

And thank God, too, because that means you can probably also easily read right over the occasional transposed letter in your Saturday morning oped page offering and harbor no animosity toward the dope whose fingers absentmindedly did the transposing. Such creations as “teh” for “the,” perhaps. Or the ever-popular “tow” for “two.”

People who can readily decipher the paragraph about the Cambridge University research should be pretty hot stuff when it comes to unscrambling the aforementioned Jumbles puzzle and others of its ilk, and could be excellent code breakers for the Central Intelligence Agency, as well, I should think.

And their brains would be cinches to catch on to the shorthand that formerly ink-stained wretches of the newspaper racket used in the old days when communication between the main office and its far-flung news bureaus and/or the wire services was by teletype. I’m sure the shorthand was not confined to the newspaper crowd. Probably any outfit that communicated via teletype used a similar jargon characteristic to its business. Conservation of words just seemed the thing to do when precious wire time was involved.

“Recd ur msg re new dev w/guv stry. Shud get info tmr nite for Wed paper, sted wait til Sat a.m. as unknow PPH sked. Pls advs how get film to Bn,” might read a typical message from boonie outpost to headquarters. Translation: The bureau chief is aware of a new development in a blockbuster story about the governor that the paper is working on, and he suggests the story run Wednesday instead of on the weekend in order to beat the Portland Press Herald, which is barking up the same tree. Also, should he flag down the first beer truck headed for Bangor to transport his film to the photo lab, or should he drive it up himself?

The teletype shorthand was second nature to reporters and editors. So much so that they had to be wary of it creeping into their copy when reverting to writing straight for the paper, or when writing a formal letter to a potential news source, say. Old habits die hard. To this day, I find myself writing “wud” for “would” and “nite” for “night” and “sted” for “instead” in informal correspondence of an inconsequential nature.

I often wonder if the recipient thinks I’m some kind of clueless numbhead, but is too polite to say so. Spose wud serve me rite.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.