Why Bill Can Read and Write.

Bill Allen was a successful businessman, but his life was radically changed when he completed the Davis Dyslexia Correction Program at the Reading Research Council in Burlingame, California. In this article, he describes the development of his writing skills through Davis Symbol Mastery.

At 42 years of age, I have avoided writing at every turn. My heart used to sink when I had to reduce my work to pen and paper. The reason for this was simple: what I wrote didn't make sense to the reader; and all too often, it didn't make sense to me.

After hours of working on a business letter, I would have someone edit, edit, and re-edit my work, so that my thoughts became understandable. More importantly, I needed to avoid embarrassing myself on this very sensitive issue. One colleague told me, "Bill, you have this conversation in your head and only two-thirds makes it to paper."

I have known I was dyslexic since the age of nine. Looking back, how I made it through elementary school, high school, and college is beyond me. However, today is a new day; Davis Symbol Mastery is opening up a whole new world to me. In fact, all these writing tools I was bombarded with in my schooling are becoming integrated into my being. Actually, it's like this flood of knowledge that keeps coming my way and I can't stop it--it's wonderful!

The key to writing is punctuation. Knowing how to play in a sentence with stop (period, question mark, exclamation mark, and colon), short stop (semi-colon and dash), and pause (comma) makes carrying on a conversation on paper natural. The huge difference in writing versus conversation is that with writing you are able to convey to the reader multiple levels of thought/action through reflection, insight (intuition, a dyslexic specialty), or fact. For the first time in my life, the act of writing something down on paper can be more powerful than a conversation. As I said earlier, this is a whole new world for this dyslexic.

My next goal for my writing; and moreover, my well-being, is to finish the 217 words that trigger disorientation. As I write this I am constantly checking my point. The idea of seeing everything I write is driving me something fierce. I know that once it's completed, my journey to wholeness will jump several levels. Just the other day, while using the very elementary grammar book included in the DDAI Symbol Mastery kit, I thought of two ways to stretch a word out like an expression in a conversation via the ellipse and hyphen (e.g., sure . . . or s-u-r-e). These writing tools are popping into my head because I can see the whole picture for the first time in my life; and moreover, my ears can hear what I see (maybe only dyslexics would understand that last thought!).

As you can read, new doors are opening every day because of Davis Symbol Mastery. The more I write the more comfortable and proficient I become. My passion for more knowledge -- more expression -- is something I can't stop.