I had been recommended this book by a friend, to help my dyslexic son with his spelling. He finds it SO easy to use! He is able to look up a word in this book faster than I can in an ordinary dictionary! I tried it initially with him with a few words that are not as they sound, like circus, psychiatrist etc, and it works perfectly every time. Generally, no meanings are given, unless they are useful to help a child choose the correct version of a homophone, eg ceiling and sealing. It's an excellent product and helps a child feel more confident and able in spelling. I would recommend this dictionary for adults and children alike with dyslexia and other problems with spelling.

This is an update of the original. It is not a dictionary that will tell you word meanings, but one purely for spelling we use these in school from Year 3 upwards (7 yr olds) who take to it readily once shwn how. Adults can teach themselves by following the instructions in the front.

You find words by initial sound and first vowel sound using a simple chart in the front. This gives yoe a page number. On the page all words are listed in columns by the number of syllables in the word in alphabetical order so you don't have to search through one long list. Words which have soft and hard alternatives(c/s, g/j, c/k, ph/f) list the same word under both letters.

We have only found two obscure polysyllabic word which are not in here so far - and that was a completion between my boys to catch it out!

The Advanced version of this is great for older children and adults.

Well worth the money for less confident spellers as well as thse with dyslexic tendencies.

This was bought on the recommendation of my daughter's school. The system works on number of syllables and main vowel sound in a word to locate it in a series of tables. My daughter is in year 5 and can use it quicker than a conventional dictionary. There are some issues with local dialect when counting syllables, but on the whole appears to work well.

This dictionary is absolutely brilliant, this is ideal for people who understand sounds and syllables but have issues with spelling.

The way it works is that you have to identify the short or long vowel in a work, for example the o sound in dog or the a sound in cat.

From there you look at the matrix and look what the first sound in the work for example d and in dog or n as in knight or n as in gnome

Then you use the matrix to locate the page number in the book. You go to the page and the words are listed by the amount of syllables in the word. 1 in dog, 4 in cat-as-troph-ie

Then look down the list and find the work, Although this sounds convoluted I was doing this with my 7 year old dyslexic son and he picked it up in seconds. There is no chance in a regular dictionary he would have found any of the words that he found in this in seconds. It is really going to help with his confidence in creative writing.

This is just such a brilliant way of organising words for those who cannot spell.

Fantastic, once you get the hang of how it is organised!

Brilliant dictionary for children, quite ingenious and well thought through. Sounding out the first vowel and then identifying the first letter of the word is then cross referenced in the index to find the page the word can be found on. Then you count the number of syllables in the word to identify the column the word is in and hey presto there's the word. Each vowel sound is given an animal that has that corresponding sound i.e. 'ie' sound lion and so all pages with that corresponding sound has a lion at the bottom so children will know they are in the correct section. I wish I had come across this earlier but now I can help improve and develop my children's vocabulary and spelling and it won't be long before they will feel confident looking up the words themselves.

My son is 12 and has mild learning problems.

As long as your child can figure out what vowel sounds are and what the first letter of a word 'sounds like' they should be able to use this dictionary...it's worth the money!!

This dictionary has given him freedom to write letters to his penpals without having to seek help all the time.

It's truly given him the independence that he's been longing for!

I feel it's already increased his self respect.

Thanks to whoever figured this out!

I bought the dictionary and book for my husband. The dictionary makes it much easier for him to find words and spellings. The book has also helped boost his confidence in showing good advantages of the problem even though some passages had to be read to him by a non dyslexic reader. In finding it hard to read and write he felt a bit less intelligent than he is, but now he sees that in fact this is not the case. a must for everyone who has someone roubd them with dyslexia, or just wants to know more about it.

What a fantastic concept. I bought this for my son who is dyslexic. I am also dyslexic, if I would of had this when I was a child, I would not of spent days crying over the classical dictionary, feeling stupid and hopeless. Thank you David Mosely for saving my Son from the pain that I went through.

Not very useful!! Unlike every dictionary of any kind I've used, this one doesn't divide the words alphabetically straight through. It's divided into 3 sections: short vowels, long vowels, vowel sound. The writer (myself) has to figure out which section the word in question falls in. It's so confusing! One word I wanted I couldn't find. Had to finally resort to my "Reader's Digest Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary." The Ace Spelling Dictionary is not a time-saver. I'm having to hunt up a simple spelling dictionary to replace this complicated one.