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Comment by Milner08 | Hacker News Reader

I am dyslexic and this is very true to me. I can read perfectly fine, although I may re-read a word occasionally, or highlight the page as I read to track where I am (A tick I was taught in school to help).

But when it comes to writing its a different ballgame. With a computer its not so tricky (and its easy to hide... hello backspace), but with a pen and paper I make mistakes all time. After many years of practice I am fairly used to taking my time and making sure I spell properly now, but I still make mistakes, and its still kind of shit when you think you've nailed the spelling, re-read everything and then someone points out mistakes you didn't even know were there. Especially the people who act like you didn't even try... Oh well.

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Same here, it is actually how I got into computers, my writing was so bad (I have dysgraphia) that they put me in a special computer lab in the 3rd grade. I am 45 so, that was not a common thing back then. My grades improved and I did well in school, but I am functionally illiterate when it comes to actually hand writing anything. I can tell what something says when I read back something I wrote, but if you where to look at it, well it might as well be hieroglyphs, it is completely illegible to anyone else.

But when it comes to typing I do OK, I transpose letters here and there, but I get by and I can read just fine, it's just in my writing that one can really tell there is something off.

>> it is completely illegible to anyone else.

Then you are one up on me. My handwriting is so bad that I myself often have difficulty reading it. It has never made much difference to me professionally. Anything that really matters is typed into some sort of device.

People at meetings often comment that I take few notes. Typing during a meeting is impolite imho and my handwriting of notes would be less than useful. So I just listen and have learned to remember what was said until I can minute it later.

I find the physical act of writing helps me remember things. There's been research on this that suggests that the processesing you need to do to write something down secures it in your memory better.

I am 100% the same. I can read fluently, and at a good speed, but I cannot write legibly to save myself. I have such poor fine control with a pen/pencil that I have to hold it in a death-grip and tense my hand and arm muscles to control the letter shapes and even then it feels like the pen/pencil is fighting back. My handwriting is unreadable unless I write in capitals all time. Once I do manage to get the words down on paper, most of the time the words have letters all in the wrong order. It's really frustrating - but at least in these modern times, I rarely have to write anything manually so there's that.

Do you have problem with your signature? And can you make it the same every time you sign (like for bank purposes)?

Do you still make mistakes writing by hand if you write with your eyes closed?

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