Left or Right

[Erik]

I’m right-handed, but I actually was left-handed.

 

I’ve broken my left wrist three times, so eventually I just learned to write with my right hand. I can still somewhat write with my left hand, yet it’s certainly out of practise. I may try to master left-handed writing again one day though.

[Nancy]

I'm a lefty and I usually write with a hook, above the line and the paper tilted to the left. But recently I've been trying to use a flexy nib and the only way to do that is to hold my hand below the line and tilt the paper to the right. I feel like a third grader! Shaky and slow. But, very slowly improving.

 

It's really interesting to watch myself to see which hand does what. I brush my teeth with my left hand. I pull weeds in the garden with my right hand. I use scissors with my right. I switched my computer mouse from the right after many years to the left. Drives people crazy when they sit at my desk, 'cause they can't use my mouse!

[Patrick Hand]

I feel like a third grader!

 

I posted some of this in another thread....

 

But about three years ago, I decided to re-learn how to write with my hand under the lines instead of "crab hand".....

 

But part of the fun, is you get to figure out exactly how you want to write..... Hey... if you'r going to re-learn something... re-learn it the way you want.........

 

 

 

And copperplate/Spencurian/ Roundhand..... HEY.... they are perfect for an underwritting lefty.... COOL.... we push and pull the pen exactly the right way to write it............ Happy happy joy Joy....... (Sorry... in a kinda silly mood tonight......)

[ishimaru_kaito]

Mentioned elsewhere (like my intro) I am a lefty, but in the first few years of school I was taught right handed writing... Until it changed in the UK... Psychologists discovered forcing the wrong hand on people caused psychological damage which AFAIK is still being evaluated. I cheated anyway, and wrote with my left when the teacher wasn't watching

I am a complete lefty except in one thing - computers - I use a mouse & keyboard as a righty. I found the left handed settings wierd.

 

The wiki reference fails to mention Badminton (which I play a lot) - for service, leftys have the advantage in singles and doubles, as we can hide the serve and place shots better, but for play, leftys only have the advantage on singles... In doubles, a lefty and righty can be ata disadvantage. I digress

 

Most pens/writing paraphernalia is not a problem... but handwriting is. I (and my mum) have a tendency to slope backwards, making cursive or italic very difficult. Any lefty's also have this difficulty?

 

Sorry about the use of lefty/righty, but it's the way I call myself. I am a lefty and proud!

[jsonewald]

I asked the question to get an idea of how FP users compared to the overall population. There are enough responses now to say that we (FP users), don't follow the general trend, given a ~ 25%/75% split between lefties and righties. The general poplulation splits at the 10%-15% point.

 

I don't know what that means, but it is kind of interesting.

[wspohn]

I knew a guy that could write normally with his right hand, and write backward with his left hand at the same time!

 

In other words, starting in the middle, and write out both ways, one regular, one mirror image. Always wondered how he was wired to be able to do that!

[cmenice]

Add me to the ambidextrous crowd. I write left handed until I get tired and then I switch to my right hand. It's a nice cycle, much less down time for fatigue. I can draw with both hands too. Not at the same time though, but I'm trying to work on that one.

[KateGladstone]

I don't know the US Army's method for re-training amputees to use the other hand/side (the Army won't talk to me, either), but I've successfully re-trained a few people who needed to change their writing hand because of injury or whatever. Part of my "method" (if you wanted to call it a method) involves thorough experimentation with various pen-positions, paper-positions, etc., which usually helps overcome the difficulties with particular writing tools/slants/styles.

[anniemac]

I'm a lefty, gone through the usual attempts in school to change me, especially where FPs concerned. You had to prove you were a neat writer before you were allowed to "graduate" to a real pen, and even though there was nothing wrong with my writing I sometimes smudged through it, and I turned my paper. Regarded as something of a freak. Not to be beaten however I have stayed as a lefty, apart from:

1) working as a checkout girl in the 80s, when tills still had keys not scanners, the set up was for right-handed use.

2) I learnt to type properly when I was 16 so that is evenly spread left and right and in my job as a journalist I still type a lot.

3) I am an archer and when I started the choice of left or right-handed was dictated by the dominant eye, not the hand. Left eye, rubbish, so I shoot right-handed.

But I do have a theory - as this is a right-handed world and we have to adapt to it, we are more likely to be slightly ambidextrous, because we have had to be. Right-handers have never really had to so are totally out of their depth if the unexpected happens.

And going back to the ratios of left to right on FPN, a few years ago I did a survey in my department at work, and out of nine of us sub editors on my desk, five of us were lefties! It's changed a bit now as staff have moved on but including me there are still 3 out of 9. A correlation between left/right choice and career?

 

Ann

 

PS, anyone ever found a left-handed dessert fork?

[Mary P]

I identify myself as right-handed because I write with my right hand most of the time. I can write with my left. Years ago when I extended invoices for a department store I ran the 10 key with my right hand and wrote cost over sell on all the invoices using my left. My figures were neater than most of the other employees in accounting and nobody had any difficulty deciphering them.

 

My mother was right handed and could do little with her left hand. My father and both of my grandfathers were left handed. As a child the hand I used for a task seemed to depend more on which adult taught me to perform the task than anything else.

 

I'm the one who can be seated next to any family member at a gathering and adapt my eating so that our elbows don't knock.

 

I cannot tell you the number of times my mother, sister or husband laughed at me and said "Your other right". To this day I have to cross myself to be sure which hand is my right. As a result of this confusions, I became proficient at giving driving directions by compass point. I may not know my right from left but I can alwys point North.

Edited December 9, 2006 by Mary P

[bernardo]

Hey lefties: Have you tried to write BACKWARDS, I mean, from right to left? I think that should be the right way for a leftie to write. The reason is simple, if you are left handed, and you write from left to right, you cannot see what you are writing unless you do a kind of arc with your hand, which looks not so nice, not to mention the mess with the wet ink!

[lisa]

Yes I can write backwards in mirror image but not very neatly. It would need a lot of practise to get it to look good.

With me ink doesn't smudge, I write with my hand under the text. I don't have a problem seeing what I write, why would I not see what I write? The letter that I'm writing is always ever so slightly in front of my hand. And being an underwriter the text is always viewable to me.

[jsonewald]

For writing I am a lefty. For hand tools, including fairly fine work, I can switch hands easily. For most sports things, I am hard core right handed, although for kicking I favor the left. For rifle and pistol shooting I can switch easily.

[georges zaslavsky]

I can sign and write with both hands with no probs , so I am ambidextrous. I started to be ambidextrous at the age of 10 and it is indeed very useful. Besides that I have learnt how to write quick with my left hand during courses in class, the result is very good. I can aslo shoot wether with the left hand or the right with a rifle/gun but in this case I am a better shooter with my left hand because my directory eye is my left eye.

Edited January 3, 2007 by georges zaslavsky

[kkbach]

Well I started out life as a lefty. I can not remeber how I held the pen - then in my mid-twenties I was in an accident that severeky damaged the nerves in my left forearm and hand. So I was forced to switch to the right hand. The in my early 40's I had a stroke - related to the earlier accident, it effected the right side of my body. Long story short I Was still better with my right hand. Though really deficient.

 

I spent a few years retraining and now I am better than I ever was. (Yeah for italic handwriting courses!) I still shoot a rifle, swing a golf club etc. left-handed.

 

But when writing I am always "aware" that I am writing with what I still consider to be my off hand.

[KateGladstone]

What a set of experiences!

What you have gone through should encourage others.

 

You know, I'd really love to see samples (covering as many years as possible) of your writing before/during/after your injuries/stroke, and before/during/after your Italic handwriting courses. Do you think you can post some samples!

 

I imagine that your Italic-course teachers must prize any testimonial letters you may have written to them. When it comes to handwriting, you have certainly gone through more than most people.

 

In this connection — I wonder whether you know about the Society for Italic Handwriting's (SIH) annual contest for "Most Improved Handwriting," which awards a prize for the winner (usually money, gift-certificate, or pen).

Unlike other handwriting contests, this requires submitting *two* samples: one of your worst handwriting done at any time, and one of your current handwriting. (The current-handwriting sample has to use Italic; the style of the worst-handwriting sample depends on whatever you wrote at the time, weeks or months or years or even decades earlier.) This allows the SIH judges to evaluate improvement by comparing the two & taking into account the time-lapse between them: as I recall, the contest-judges also take into account any special circumstances that you make known in your current-writing submission (such as having survived an injury/illness that affects handwriting).

 

I don't recall whether the Society accepts contest-entries from non-members, but if they do ... well, anyone who survived a writing-arm injury AND a stroke affecting the other arm (and now writes better than ever, thank to Italic, even though compelled by the stroke to use his "off" arm) would seem to stand an excellent chance of winning an Italic organization's contest for "Most Improved."

May I suggest that you contact the Secretary of the SIH (my friend Nicholas Caulkin at nickthenibs@endwood.freeserve.co.uk ) to find out whether you can enter the contest without belonging to the SIH? (Or perhaps, for all I know to the contrary, you have *already* joined the SIH ... ?)

[OldPott]

Have you tried to write BACKWARDS, I mean, from right to left? I think that should be the right way for a leftie to write.

 

 

If you mean mirror writing, then yes. As a child I wrote this way all the time and was constantly in trouble for it. I could calculate okay in arithmetic but I would then write the figures the wrong way round - until my mother showed my teachers how to hold my work up to a mirror they were really worried.

 

Lost the ability a bit but in college could still do the ole Da Vinci thing to disguise my notes. Now find it almost impossible.

 

I still tend to read magazines from the back, though....

 

I think that a higher proportion of leftys use a fountain pen than one might expect because writing is just more difficult - and with a fountain pen you have to slow down and take more care.

 

Use a mouse with my right hand though and play the guitar right handed - could never be bothered to turn the strings round.

[FrankB]

I am right-handed and I must be terminally so. I would love to be ambidextrous. While on active duty, I had a bad injury to my right hand. While I recovered, I saw the opportunity to achieve my goal of being ambidextrous so I tried using my left hand to write. The experience was awful. I never learned.

 

The folks on active duty in the Army who retrain amputees are few and far between. The trainers are vocational rehabilitation specialists, though some are physical therapists. I tend to think you might have more luck trying to consult Veterans Administration Vocational Rehab people as they tend to be more intigrated into the civilian community. I worked in clinical environments for my last five years on active duty, but I never saw this kind of training being done.

[KateGladstone]

Those interested in teaching a left-hander to write (or to write better) —

 

and those interested in re-teaching a right-hander to write left-handed (because of injury/illness/etc rendering the right hand useless for writing) —

 

should look at LEFT HAND WRITING SKILLS at http://robinswoodpress.com/main/productseries.php?id=930 — for free downloadable pages and other info, click the blue-and-white links in the left margin.

I increasingly recommend this book to my left-handed students, and also to naturally right-handed folks who (for whatever reason) cannot use the right hand for writing. Also, I definitely recommend it to any parent, teacher, or other person who teaches/shows a left-hander how to write.

If you order LEFT HAND WRITING SKILLS, please tell the publisher (Christopher Marshall) that you learned about it from me You can reach Mr. Marshall at cm@robinswoodpress.com

[bernardo]

It's strange; only 10% of the world's population is left handed, but the results of this poll don't match that figure...