Dyslexia - “I’m playing all the right notes—but not necessarily in the right order"

Full disclosure – I’m one of an estimated one in ten of the population who have some degree of dyslexic tendency.

Anyone who knows me or has worked on documents with me (or maybe read a post I have made on this blog?) knows this already.

I spell in pure Microsoft (MS WinWord’s launch in 2003, and its predecessors of WordStar and Word Perfect were all professionally life changing – as for many years was having a secretary with a 1st in English Language). But technical and human aids to one side, the fact is errors will always creep through as neither the smart people of Redmond nor I can proof out all issues of the syntactically ambiguous, transitive, ditransitive, first object into the second object, verbal action and the myriad of other complications involved in recording language on paper.

I get that many people are fastidious in their judgements on grammar, spelling and punctuation. without this rather insular and insecure clique Radio 4’s complaints section would be much smaller. In my experience some positively pin an internal superiority complex on articulating such nit picking.

But my next sentence delivers the truth that applies to most real world situations. It dseno’t matter in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Get it? If so, get over it…

Dyslexia is not an illness or mental impairment. It’s not contagious and unlike many school teachers and indeed the NHS if you are dyslexic and recognise it’s fences and gateways it is very unlikely you will view it as a “learning difficulty”. It’s not.

What it is a difference.

A difference that In some ways is negative - it can have a major impact on spelling, speed of reading, letter and number confusion, sequencing within directions and written instructions.

But it’s also a difference of positives - a dyslexic is often at an advantage as a result of having been forced to cope with the expected normal of life, school, higher education and work by developing work rounds to the challenges they have faced. Work rounds that equip them with well-developed strengths in important attributes such as; Creativity, Observance, Empathy and arming them with exceptional abilities in areas such as; big-picture understanding & making obtuse connections, good problem solving & strong narrative and three dimensional reasoning.

In short dyslexics are very often people who have excellent thinking skills in the areas of conceptualization, reason, imagination, and abstraction.

If you are at the start of your career and worried dyslexia will hold you back – forget it - just get on with life and work for your success.

As a dyslexic you may write much as Eric Morcombe played the piano – but to the best of my knowledge he was not a dyslexic.

On the other hand, Mozart was!