Guide:Reading glasses prescriptions
 | This article is under construction. Please help develop it, whatever your level of expertise |
How do you read these complicated things!? Believe it or not, they're actually pretty simple to understand.
Spherical
Spherical is the overall correction, in all directions. It is measured in diopters. A minus value means the lense is used correct myopia and a plus value means it is used to correct presbyopia.
Cylinder
Cylinder is the additional correction in a specific direction of your eye. It is measured in diopters. Think of a straight line going across the surface of your eye at a certain degree. The degree this happens at is your axis.
Cylinder correction means your eye has some level of astigmatism.
Axis
Axis is the degree at which cylinder values are relevant. The correct cylinder value but the wrong axis value would make the correction pretty worthless! When reducing your correction, you should never ever change the axis, especially if you've had that value of axis for a long time.
If you don't have any cylinder correction, you will not have an axis value either.