Can you have good writing ability with bad writing accuracy?

I have a friend who is severely dyslexic (I tend to scepticism of a lot of people claiming to be dyslexic, mostly because I attend a school where it's common practice to use dyslexia either a) as an excuse for stupidity or b) as a pretext to get extra time in exams, but, believe me, this particular person really is) and thus tends to a lot of misspellings and punctuation mistakes when she writes. However, I've taken English classes with her, and I've seen both stories she's written and things like essays, and except for the inaccuracy of her writing she's otherwise pretty good.

There is, obviously, a difference between having dyslexia and just being really bad at spelling and grammar, but surely in theory if something like dyslexia doesn't affect technical writing ability then it's entirely possible to completely fail at spelling and grammar but otherwise write well. However, in practice, on the internet there's an extremely strong correlation between a story being written accurately and being written at least reasonably well. I don't recall ever having seen a fanfic or something similar which was well written but full of mistakes. It just doesn't seem to happen.

So I suppose the questions that I'm asking are: is it possible to write well without being able to use good spelling and grammar? If not, why? Is it purely because they both have some correlation with intelligence, or something else?

The thing is, if you post a story and don't bother to find and correct your spelling mistakes, that usually means that you don't put much effort in the story in general. That's why spelling and quality come together most times. (Also, the more you write the more you practise, but you also get better at spelling.)

But yes, I'd say it's completely possible to do that, even without being dislexic or something.

edited 3rd Sep '11 4:18:18 AM by Dealan

Having good writing ability and good spelling and grammar is optimal, but in theory it's possible to possess the former without the latter (the reverse is certainly true, after all). I say "in theory" because I, like you, can't think of anything that was both riddled with Rouge Angles of Satin and was actually good.

Yes. Definitely.

My mother was one of the only people that her college writing professor, in his quarter-century of teaching, ever told to become a professional author. This said, her spelling is atrocious.

Yes, but at the same time, presenting a badly-spelled piece of work to someone who isn't copyediting (editing for such mistakes) is not an acceptable practice. Dyslexia is not an excuse to publish poor grammar; my sister has dyslexia, and whenever she has an essay or piece of writing to hand in, she asks me to read through for mistakes. I wouldn't read a work for fun if it had numerous language errors— if the author isn't going to put in the effort to make it readable, I won't read it.

I've never seen a work that has just generically bad grammar and is actually good, but I've seen several that have single, annoyingly persistent errors but are otherwise good.