Are you Dsy le x ic? ..What to do if you suspect that you may be Dyslexic

This morn­ing I openly mused about my abil­ity to write con­sid­er­ing that I am the mis­tress of typos. A friend (@TheHighRoad) posed the ques­tion of whether or not I knew of any famous dyslexic writ­ers. That led to this post.

As most peo­ple of 80’s gen­er­a­tion the first time I ever heard of Dyslexia was from this episode of the Cosby show:

Dyslexia is one of those enig­matic non prob­lems for most peo­ple to be per­fectly hon­est. I have never had much regard for it because it isn’t some­thing tan­gi­ble. I can’t see the symp­toms so like most peo­ple feel it almost seems to not really exist. But, it is a very real prob­lem for the peo­ple plagued with it.

I have always had an issue with trans­pos­ing let­ters, num­bers, word sequences, as well as fre­quently mis­spelling or using the wrong form of two words that are alike. Here is an exam­ple of what my writ­ing looks like with­out the aid of spellcheck and my con­stant proof­reads:

This is the typ­i­cak way that i type with­oug the aid of proof­read­ing. I mis­spell words that I shoold nkow very well or miz up the let­ters and puthtem in a order in which thay do not belong. When I do this i have a hard time deter­min­gin which word goes where. But, I, how­ever as fas as I know am noit Dyslexic.

A dyslexic per­son may have trou­ble read­ing sim­ple words although they are ones that are com­monly used. Dyslexia will man­i­fest itself in trou­ble read­ing as well as poor to no com­pre­hen­sion of what’s read. Dyslexic chil­dren have a lot of dif­fi­culty in school and can be labeled as lazy.

How do Dyslexic peo­ple see words?

They don’t. A dyslexic per­son sees pic­tures instead of words. Words may present them­selves in groups or bunched together instead of the actual way they were writ­ten. Many times if a dyslexic per­son can­not form a men­tal image of a word then he will not be able to iden­tify it.

The web­site Happydyslexic​.com gives some insight on what tests a per­son may need to deter­mine if the are dyslexic as well as in depth infor­ma­tion on how a dyslexic per­son can receive help to cope with this learn­ing dis­abil­ity.

Here is a list of famous Dyslexic Writers:

Hans Christian Andersen
Agatha Christie
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Edgar Allen Poe
William Butler Yeats
Jules Verne

Thanks for read­ing,