The relationship between speech and print is essentially asymmetrical and changes as the reading ability of the child improves. For the child who has succeeded at decoding, the asymmetry implies that commonalities between speech and print are more important than their differences. Three hypothetical observation points illustrate the similarity between speech and print: (1) beginning reading--speech has many unique properties, the speech-print overlap is small, and print is more similar to speech than speech is to print; (2) intermediate reading--print has more properties than at point one (both unique and shared with speech), print has become more similar to speech and speech has become more similar to print, and print is more similar to speech than speech is to print--however the asymmetry is much less than at point one; and (3) adult skilled reading--print experience has further increased both print's unique properties and those shared with speech, speech has relatively fewer unique properties than before, and speech is nearly as similar to print as print is to speech. For the child, the first two observation points are the important ones. The first point affords the view that the beginning reader confronts a task that has several differences from what the reader is accustomed to--that reading requires decoding and that reading is out of context. At the second point, the third grade child, if decoding has been mastered, is very dependent on listening ability. (HOD)