Spotting Dyslexic tendencies through handwriting

What is Dyslexia ?
As the dictionary meaning of Dyslexia states- A learning disorder marked by impairment of the ability to recognize and comprehend written words.
As wikipedia define- Dyslexia is a learning disorder that manifests itself as a difficulty with reading, spelling and in some cases mathematics.
Dyslexia is usually not considered as an Intellectual disability. The dyslexic child though with sort of learning disability is as normal as any other child in the vicinity.

Dyslexia symptons:
There are a lot of valuable sources available on Internet basically stating the symptoms of Dsylexia. I will just sum up a few important ones-
1. Directional confusion: The Child does not have a good sense of direction and is generally not able to distinguish between Left, Right, up, down and may have difficult reading maps.
2. Many dyslexic people are not able to follow the proper sequence of letters in a word. While reading the word, they tend to incorrectly follow the sequence of letters and while writing they will generally tend to misspell some letters of a word.
3. Misreads little words, such as a for and, the for a, from for for, then for there, were for with.
4. Omits or reads twice little words like the, and, but, in.
5. Complains of dizziness, headaches or stomach aches while reading.
6. Confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences, or verbal explanations.
7. Reading or writing shows repetitions, additions, transpositions, omissions, substitutions, and reversals in letters, numbers and/or words.

Dyslexia and Handwriting:
The symptoms of Dyslexia can be understood from one's handwriting. Some examples as below-
- The dyslexic may reverse letters like b and d, or p and q, either when reading or writing.
- He may invert letters, reading or writing n as u, m as w, d as q, p as b, f as t.
- He may read or write words like no for on, rat for tar, won for now, saw for was.
- He may read or write 17 for 71.
- He may mirror write letters, numbers and words.
- He may put syllables in the wrong order, reading animal as ‘aminal’, hospital as ‘hopsital’, enemy as ‘emeny’.
- The dyslexic may reverse numbers, and read or write 17 for 71.
- He may transpose numbers i.e., 752 – 572.
- Spells words as they sound, for example ‘rite’ for right.

Dyslexia in the news:
My first introduction to Dyslexia was though a sensitive bollywood movie called Taare Zameen Par . The movie brilliantly captured the life and struggles of a dyslexic child, when his parents, school teachers and friends fail to recognize his disorder and treats him as one having low intelligence. The wonderful movie passes on the apt message about how to emphatically deal with such a child and helping him find his true calling.

Recently heard this news about Supreme court in India rejecting the plea of Dyslexic child from using the calculator in exams. While the court might have its own intelligent reason for this decision but being in a progressive society, it is imperative to be sensitive to the needs of different sects of society especially the special ones. Probably, this ruling is like a deserving blind student being asked to appear for an exam without a Braille system. Injustice is probably a mild word here!

Sources of Information:
http://www.audiblox.com/dyslexia_symptoms.htm
http://www.dyslexia.com/library/symptoms.htm