Eye Health: How to Read Your Eyeglass Prescription

When you look at your prescription for glasses, you will see numbers listed under the headings of OS and OD. They are Latin abbreviations; OS (oculus sinister) means the left eye and OD (oculus dextrus) means the right eye. Occasionally you will see a notation for OU, which means something involving both eyes. In general, the further away from zero the number on your prescription, the worse your eyesight and the more vision correction you need. A plus sign in front of the number means you are farsighted and a minus sign means you are nearsighted. These numbers represent diopters, the unit used to measure the correction, or focusing power, of the lens your eye requires. Diopter is often abbreviated "D."

For example, if your prescription says -1.00, you have one diopter of nearsightedness. This is a fairly mild amount of nearsightedness. If you are -4.25, that means you have 4 and 1/4 diopters of nearsightedness. This is more nearsighted than -1.00, and requires stronger (thicker) lenses. Similarly, +1.00 would be a small amount of farsightedness and +5 would be more.

For people who have astigmatism, there will be three numbers in your prescription. The general form for writing these numbers is S x C x Axis

The S refers to the "spherical" portion of the prescription, which is the degree of nearsightedness or farsightedness discussed above.

The C refers to the "cylinder" or astigmatism, and can be a negative or a positive number. It measures in diopters the degree of astigmatism that you have. The bigger this number, the more astigmatism you have.

The Axis is a number anywhere between 0 and 180 degrees. It reveals the orientation of the astigmatism It is not enough to specify how much astigmatism there is; you have to know where the difference in curvature is taking place.

Here are two examples of what prescriptions for eyes with astigmatism could look like:

-2.00 +1.50 x 180

+3.50 +3.00 x 45

The first prescription means that the person has 2 diopters of nearsightedness with 1.5 diopters of astigmatism. and an axis of 180 degrees.

The second prescription means that the person has 3.5 diopters of farsightedness, 3 diopters of astigmatism and an axis of 45 degrees.

Reviewed by the doctors at The Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute.