This issue of Topics in Language Disorders presents a picture of speaking, listening, reading, and writing and identifies how speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and special educators may use their knowledge and educational experiences in helping children (and adults) who demonstrate difficulties in their educational settings. It also presents new opportunities for determining intervention activities that are appropriate for individualized or group instruction. Issue Editor Venable and her authors have provided a rich display of how the area of "readability" may be adapted in any number of ways that school personnel function in the provision of direct or indirect services.

As readers may know, there has been a change in the scope of practice of SLPs, endorsed by the American Speech-Language-Hearing-Association. Members of ASHA have been sent this document recently and members will find it under the title "Knowledge and Skills Needed by Speech-Language Pathologists with Respect to Reading and Writing in Children and Adolescents," appearing in Supplement No. 23 April 15, 2003. (It is the 100-page document you have set aside to read at your discretion.) It may be that the time has come to read the Ad Hoc Committee on Reading and Writing's report (pp. 93-102). The Committee Chair, Nicky Nelson with her members, Hugh Catts, Barbara Ehren, Froma Roth, Cheryl Scott, Maureen Staskowki, and Roseanne Clausen (ex officio), have created a document that addresses the questions and concerns of readers who are uncertain about engaging in this expanded role of SLPs. We owe this Committee loud applause for this considerable effort.

Readers of TLD will find many of the ideas incorporated in the Committee document have been presented in past issues of TLD. SLPs in many settings including school-based clinicians, private practitioners, those who are agency-based, and those in pediatric settings will find food for thought and for clinical practice in this issue on Readability. The many exemplars on how to measure readability and how to adapt its uses, the case studies, and the identification of major resources provide solid evidence for those of us who treasure working with children and adolescents with language disorders.

In 1980, in the first issue of TLD (1:1), and with Geraldine Wallach as the first Issue Editor, "From the Editor," carried the message below:

Language, the hallmark of humanity,

Language, a silver stream of sounds

Language, spoken, read, and written-a complex phenomenon

Language, its acquisition, development and disorders-a fascinating field of inquiry!!

I believed it then, and in 2003, I believe it still.