Dyslexia unbounded
Writing with dyslexia brings rewards with its challenges, says Alice Dunn
Alice Dunn
When you picture students doing exams (pre-pandemic), you might imagine an enormous school hall full of pupils sitting at separate desks spaced evenly apart.
My experience was different. I remember doing my GCSEs and A-Levels in a small side-room along with a few other students in my year. We had extra time for exams because of various learning difficulties. As my dyslexia (and dyspraxia) impacts the way I get words onto the page, I was offered a scribe, but I couldn’t bear the thought of dictating my answers for someone to write down, however kind or patient they were. So I used a laptop instead. Without the extra time and use of a typewriting device, I know I would probably not have managed to finish a single paper.
As a writer and journalist, I’ve thought more and more about what it means to be dyslexic. For a start, I’d be embarrassed if anyone saw the convoluted route each sentence takes before I finally leave it alone. Here, a line by Thomas Mann rushes forth: A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Reassuring as those words are, a quick glance at my handwritten prose hammers home the colourful process that writing with dyslexia can be. Pages are either covered in carets (those little inverted ‘v’ shapes you put between two words to show another word needs to be squeezed in) or numerous asterisks signalling chunks of text waiting at the bottom of the page and needing to be read in that moment for cohesion. It is a picture of chaos: impossible to decipher, and quite a mission to bring about. Writing by hand for rough notes is alright (although my handwriting itself resembles that of a high-achieving twelve-year-old) but, still now, some ideas never come to fruition because my hand cannot keep up with my brain. This was a particular hindrance in the classroom, although despite those challenges, I was determined to study English Literature for my undergraduate degree at university.