When Dyslexia Strikes

dyslexics of the world untie!

from JoeUser Forums

        As long as I'm in an apologetic mode....

        I am seriously dyslexic. It gets worse when my chronic illness (with its mental-faculties destroying effects) enters its chronic phase. (As it has been most of this year.) I've noticed some of my comments are getting spotty at best. Take this one:

For all you know you were just a pawn in some devious rift she was playing on her boyfriend.

It's trite but true that there are plenty more fish in the sea. Find one who's mouth waters at your dangling worm.

        Obviously that was supposed to be "Find one whose mouth waters at your dangling worm." *SIGH* (Not to mention the previous paragraph was supposed to read "riff" not "rift." Though I suppose that one still kinda worked.)

        I hadn't previously been spell checking my comments (articles, yes; comments, no) , but I've started. I've even reinstituted the long unused practice of having my computer read my writing back to me, so I can catch even more mistakes.

        The thing about dyslexia is, you don't read things as they are. Somewhere between the input and your perception the signal gets altered. I could read my work 50 times and never catch the mistake because I don't see what is there. I see what is supposed to be there. My brain changes it to read as it's meant to. The errors go right by me.

        The results can be truly embarrassing. One article on my website was up for months before I happened to notice it was such an incomprehensible mess that even I wasn't sure how it was supposed to read. Apparently the intervening months had been enough to erase the "should be" from my mind and allow the "is" through.

        (I think that's one of the things that bothers me about "language cops" on forums -- the kind of guys who don't have an argument so they start nit picking over grammar. You never know when someone is dyslexic or something similar. They may have a Masters in English and still miss things. As far as I'm concerned the purpose of language is to communicate. If the language used -- no matter how poor -- communicated well enough that you know how to correct it then it was good enough to serve its purpose. Nobody's perfect, guys! Even published books, read by multiple editors and proofreaders, get released with sometimes shockingly obvious mistakes. I'd blame dyslexic typesetters, but multiple people are supposed to be reading the galley proofs too. That's why galleys exist!)

        Anyway, I'm apologizing for the increase in grammatical errors in my comments (and the couple that slipped through in my articles; I hope I've caught them all).

blogging
2,822 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
it's almost impossible to adequately proof one's own work--dyslexic or not. spellcheckers can make things even more complicated because its easy to hit the wrong key and wind up with a correctly spelled word that isnt at all what you intended.

it's even more impossible to adequately proof your own writing onscreen.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Does dyslexia come in degrees? It's just that I find that I seem to make so many grammatical errors in my comments. I am not a fast typist and I read over everything before I hit the 'post comment' button but I always seem to miss things....very mild dyslexia or just sloppy work?
It must be incredibly frustrating to work with when it becomes more severe. You mentioned you 'chronic illness' what is the relationship between that and your dyslexia?
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
Apparently the intervening months had been enough to erase the "should be" from my mind and allow the "is" through


yes smataz, that gap between "nobody understands what i wrote" and "this makes no sense to me either, come to think of it" was responsible for many a deleted article early in my blog

mig XX
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
You think you're bad? I think 8 out of 10 others have much worse grammar and spelling habits than you. For the record, I have not found anything of your that was difficult to read due to the writing. But then again, I spend a good deal of time on IRC where people write like retards.

- B
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
Oh, for fuck's sake! I got an error message from JoeUser and assumed my comment wasn't accepted. If you like, you can delete the 18 jillion extra comments. :/

-- B