On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:33:14 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote: > It's hypothetically possible, since reading and writing use > different areas of the brain, and a person might suffer brain > damage that impairs their reading ability but not their writing > ability. But such cases would be rare. Not if they'd had a stroke which can happen even in babies: as happened to my son. He can't read properly, nor comprehend what the words mean, but he can write after a fashion. He has a near photographic memory so knows what the words look like. He's also been taught the order the words go in but that's as far as it goes. He can recognise certain words in a book or on a menu - especially on a menu!! However, he's a 20th century boy, not a 19th century one. Had he been born back then, he'd have ended up in an institution if he was lucky (ish) but would have been regarded as the village idiot otherwise. Same thing could apply to an older person back then who hadn't been taught to read or write in the first place.