Is there a type of autistic person interested in words?

I have a word obsession as well. There is something called hyperlexia, which is a child's precocious ability to read sooner than normal, which some autistic people have.

For me, I did learn to read early and easily. I read significantly faster than other people and spelling is something that comes automatically to me without effort. I remember at school when we were learning to spell, and having to do spelling tests, and I didn't understand why. To me, once you see a word you know how it's spelt, because the word has a "shape". I always got full marks on spelling tests and for a long time I never understood why people spelt things wrongly. It used to really annoy me.

I remember one time when I was seeing a psychologist and I questioned something she had written, and she seemed shocked and said "you can read upside down?". I thought everyone could... because it's the same word, just rotated. You still recognise a triangle if it's upside down? But apparently most people can't, they struggle to see the letters and have to sound out the word backwards.

When I was a teenager I became obsessed with etymology. I became very interested in Old English, and I've taught myself Latin. I really want to learn Sanskrit but struggling to find the time, but that's basically top of my list of things to do if I ever can quit my job.

I see in my head the spelling of words whenever people are talking, and I watch everything with subtitles on because I want to see how people's names and places are spelt. Unfortunately in my experience the subtitles are wrong in every show, on every broadcaster and streaming service. I obsessively collected the examples of incorrect subtitles and used to send them to Netflix and Amazon Prime but they never responded or did anything about it. I still collect them anyway, I have a folder with over 1000 images.

I am exactly like you! We are of the same species! I rarely meet word nerds like me.

My mum said she didn't know how I learned to read, one day I couldn't read and the next day I could. My daughter was the same.

My husband is dyslexic, he struggled to learn to read and has to laboriously sound out and spell out words, he is always asking me for help. He recently learned how to read upside down (he is 50)

Yes I never understood how people couldn't spell and it used to annoy me. Then I went to work in a school and realised that some people's brains just don't work that way. Some people will never learn to read, write and spell. I worked with a severely dyslexic boy, he could only spell his name and 3 letter words. One day however, he shouted 'Miss! Is that letter a B?' Everyone in the class clapped.

That was a huge eye opener for me. That and realising my husband is dyslexic, so are most of his family. They weren't diagnosed at school because dyslexia wasn't known about back then, they just thought they were stupid. My husband was put in the slow readers class. Now he's a trained nurse, teacher, he manages his own training department at a company. Definitely not stupid.

One of my proudest achievements is that my hyperlexia or whatever it is, has cancelled out my husband's dyslexia. Our daughter is not dyslexic in the slightest. She has been helping her dad with spelling since she was 8 years old!

I see spelling in my head when people talk, I see the shapes of words, I watch everything with subtitles on. I don't even know I do it now, they are on all the time!

My very dyslexic late mother in law complained about this, she said 'why do we have the letters on? Turn them off'. She could barely read or write tbh. Books were a mystery to her, she didn't know what an address book was when I asked for one for my birthday and I got a diary instead. What a strange world to live in with no understanding of words...

One of the words things I do is read the ingredients on shampoo and make up bottles. The oxy moxy hydro stuff. I read them aloud for tongue twister practice, it is a lot of fun!

Good to know I'm not alone. I never met someone like me.

We find who we need.

We find who we need.