10-year-old writes brilliant poem about dyslexia and it goes viral

Dyslexics of the world, Untie!

8 Likes

Have you tried changing the angle of your writing hand and/or the paper while you’re writing on it? (Especially useful for lefties.)

2 Likes

Last I heard, the popular trend was to expunge cursive writing entirely.

2 Likes

Not a leftie, but I’ll give it a try - thanks! A colleague once told me to hold the pen further from the tip, and that helped.

2 Likes

Yes but it has to be fast, which print isn’t. I don’t need to take full minutes, but I want to be able to make notes during a meeting. Currently I just can’t keep up.

No idea if this is feasible:

For me - I take meeting notes in the form of diagrams - venn, flow, decision - with action items down the right side with handy little checkboxes to tell me what I’ve knocked off.

4 Likes

I tried to read it, but failed. I need it typed out.

Look upthread, that is, here.

1 Like

Definitely, handwriting needs to be fast. In comparative speed-tests of different handwriting forms (source on request), cursive and printed actually tested out as about equally fast (at least, for legible versions of either), BUT the writing form that turned out to be BOTH fastest AND most legible was the kind of writing that joins only some (NOT all) letters — making just the easiest joins, skipping the rest — and that uses print-like letter-shapes for letters whose cursive & printed shapes “disagree.” This is in line with what the Getty/Dubay people teach (the ones referenced upthread), though it is sheer heresy as far as conventional USA handwriting instruction goes.

4 Likes

Dashcams aren’t quite as good as a well-aimed ersatz RED in a meeting. <–revised to say
Meant> There is never going to be time to make everyone’s ideas look good in a meeting, during the same meeting. <-awwww. But nobody believes sardonic wit during the meeting anyhow, so…until they do, you say?

Carla: This FSF captcha thing is pretty good, just fix the making people go blind reading the prelude to a poem which turns out to be the whole thing. Oh man, sci-hub’s about to add some professional distance (at the captchas,) isn’t it?

3 Likes

I don’t have any good tips, I’ve struggled with it my whole life. I found that using a very fine drafting/drawing pen with an ink well helps me. Part of my problem is just the physical construction of my hands. My thumbs are unusually low, arched backwards away from my hands at near 45 degree angle at the ends and the base is rotated inward towards my palms somewhat when resting. The best way I’ve found for me to actually be able to be precise with the pen is to hold the pen perpendicular to the page. Printing slowly this way gives me writing that isn’t particularly pretty, but is at least legible.

1 Like

Shit, I can’t write that neatly.

This is not a nice poem
So do not tell me
That it was not copied directly from somewhere
That it required effort from someone with difficulties
In this case, I can see, though
Some ten-year-olds can be capable of extraordinary things
Ten-year-old-me was a rampant not-quite-plagiarizer

14 Likes

:clap:
:clap:
:clap:
:clap:

5 Likes

Yup. All these make it very clear that the basic form is simply

[bad thing]
so don’t say that
[good thing]

with some minor variations.

Not to cast shade on a ten-year-old doing a good job on an assignment, it’s just that every time one of these comes out its

So awesome you are, having figured out what the rest of the rabble haven’t yet.

Were you also into these kinds of poems way, way before they were cool?

2 Likes

I used to know a dyslexic, in school, who could write poetry but the first letter of each line would form a message for all the people in class who knew to look for it. Misspelled, sure, but he would do it fast and always funny.

3 Likes

I got frustrated and didn’t read all the comments.
My frustration may be unjustified, maybe somebody mentioned this already.

Dyslexics are people who reverse text.
Isn’t that the point?

I’m dyslexic.

1 Like

In other words, humans won’t need to learn the Heptapod language from space aliens, we’ll be teaching it to ourselves with poetry like this.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.