From time to time you will be faced with people criticising your spelling / reading whether this is at work, in a shop, at home or just about anywhere you need to read and write in front of people who don’t know you are dyslexic.
For me I’ve always dealt with this criticism badly but I would guess most people do as no one likes being show up. I’ve found it hard over the years to deal with people who point out spelling errors or when I read something incorrect and for the most this is because I am dyslexic and I cannot read and spell very well rather than just making a mistake.
My full time job at the moment is a ‘Internet Marketer’ – what this basically means is I will create a website, add content, get some links and try to make money off said site. All the sites I create will have some content on as without the content a site is worthless in the eyes of the search engines. However this of course is not a great situation to be in when you can’t really write and spell very well and you are constantly adding in new content to sites.
Throughout the years of working online I’ve had hundreds of e-mails from various people commenting on my spelling errors and grammatical errors on just about every site I’ve ever produced.
Up until recently I’ve always wanted to send an e-mail back to these people telling them to .. well being polite ‘get lost’ and many times I have which has caused some online arguments via e-mails which, at the end of the day is just pointless. It’s hard for anyone to take criticism but I think being dyslexic and knowing that you can’t spell very well cuts you just that little bit deeper.
As time goes on though and I become older and wiser I tend to play it down via e-mail and just explain that it was just a silly error and I’ll get it changed but I’ve found this a very difficult transition and still do.
It is not an easy thing to do but if someone is going to criticise your spelling / reading you really need to be able to just let it go and move on. I do find being daft with it normally works but it is a hard state of mind to get to.
On the other site of this though many of the e-mails I get commenting about how poor my spelling is tend to look like they have been written by a five year old. I’ve had many e-mails in which I’ve asked my wife to look at and she noticed (as did I) many spelling and grammatical errors in the e-mails which were criticising my mistakes.
I can understand people making mistakes but if you are going to comment on other people’s spelling mistakes you would ‘think’ you would take the time to ensure that the e-mail you are sending if free from mistakes itself. I would also like to add that many of these e-mails I get are from people like teachers, solicitors and various other large business owners!
So once in a while I will be out shopping for a card whether this is a birthday card, anniversary or Christmas card but this of course depends on the time of the year. Although a very simple process in theory I’ve twice not made two very silly mistakes by buying the wrong card.
I remember a little while back I was invited to a friends wedding so of course I needed to buy a congratulations on getting married card. I went in to the shop, spent some time finding the card (reading the message inside), bought the card and headed back to the car. It’s at this point my wife (girlfriend at the time) pointed out I had bought a card saying ‘congratulations on your engagement’.
Of course after she pointed out the error I was, if being honest too ashamed to return the card and exchange it for a correct one. Luckily my wife did this as she knows how I get if/when I make a mistake.
The second time I’ve done this was yesterday (Valentines days). Yet again I went to a supermarket, browsed the card section (the correct section) found a card which message inside I liked, bought the card and thought nothing of it. Of course the wife didn’t see the card when I was buying it as it is meant to be a surprise.
However, when I got home and finally wrote the card out the front of the card read ‘Happy Annaversity’ .. oops
This is a problem I find when reading books cards or anything really. For some reason when reading I will sort of ‘skim’ the words I’m reading and replace words with what I ‘think’ should be there. In the case of the valentines card I just replaced Anniversary with Valentines.
This does pose a problem in everyday life but it’s something I need and other dyslexic’s should try to avoid by just simply reading slowly and each word. It will make reading much slower but better to read slow than to buy your wife a Annaversity card on Valentines day!