Left or Right

[mschaffer]

I assume the poll was asking about what hand you prefer to write with a fountain pen.

 

When writing, with items like pencils, fountain pens, ballpoints, I prefer to use my left hand. When I am writing on the dry-erase boards, chalk boards, etc., I prefer to use my right hand.

 

I can thank my kindergarten teacher for this. She made me pick a hand for writing (I used to use both---poorly). Since my left hand seemed to have better stamina when writing with those oversize pencils, I picked "leftie". When I got older and needed to demonstrate things on the board, I picked up the chalk with my right hand without thinking. So, now my handwriting with my right hand is poor when using pens, and I fatigue easily when using my left hand on the dry-erase boards for long periods.

 

Constant use of my left hand greatly improved my handwriting, so I decided to specialize the handedness of other activities. Since we live in a righty world, I picked this for just about anything that requires equipment (golf clubs, baseball mitts, can openers, etc.).

 

However, I still insist on keeping my fork in my left hand the whole time! If I need to cut, I use the right hand for the knife, but the fork remains in the left hand. I used to be ridiculed by many people for this (growing up in the US) but have realized that it is perfectly acceptable in other countries.

 

I still do get the occasional odd stare when in Japan and using hashi (chopsticks) with the left hand.

[Bill Smith]

I am your classic lefthanded overwriter. I do have some relatives who are ambidextrous. One aunt breaking her right arm as a girl, started writing with her left hand (or was it the other way around).

[knitbug]

South paw here...

 

Is there still hope to get proper line variations out of a flex nib for a lefty? Any instruction book that someone can recommend?

 

 

I'm a lefty who writes neither over or underhand when using a firm nib. However when I play with my new semi-flex Duofold (it is semi-flex, right Bill?) I *have* to write underhand if I want to press lightly for line variation. But placing the paper in the opposite direction allows me to pull the stroke downwards instead of pushing, and with slight pressure it's quite smooth! I was afraid I'd be unable to use flex, but with that technique I'm quite excited about the possibilities with flexier nibs!

 

Cheers,

Knitbug

 

[jsonewald]

Regarding scissors - it's amusing to leave a pair of true left-handed scissors (meaning left handed handles and left handed blades) out and watch right handers try to use them. Aside from being more comfortable for a left hander to use, they are far less likely to be "Borrowed" and not returned.

[Stephen-I-am]

From reading about the subject, it seems that the brain is very plastic and can adapt to different needs.

 

I was taught to eat in the american/english way (fork in left hand, knife in right, fork holds down food while knife cuts, then knife is put down and fork switched to right hand to eat), but when I spent a year in France, I adapted to the continental way (fork stays in left hand and knife stays in right hand; knife is lowered while a bite is taken -- much more logical ).

 

I think that if ever I learned a language written right to left, I would train myself to use my left hand.

 

By the way, I'm reading the Count of Monte Cristo, where one of the bad guys uses his left hand to disguise his handwriting when he pens a letter denouncing the protagonist. Great book; Dumas' french is exquisite.

 

Stephen

[Judybug]

I am right-handed, but due to arthritis problems with my right hand I've been writing with my left hand for about four months. I was always a finger-writer with my right hand. When I first discovered FPN and read that arm-writing is preferable, I tried to "arm-write" with my right hand with zero success. I couldn't do it at all. In fact, I couldn't even understand what "arm-writing" is.

 

In May I started writing with my left hand and was shocked to find that my left hand automatically does "arm-writing!" I've tried finger-writing with my left hand and found that my left hand is as incapable of finger-writing as my right hand is of arm-writing. Has anyone else had a similar experience - where right and left hand/arm can perform the same tasks, but use different muscles to do so?

 

Judybug

[extrafine]

When I was in elementary school in the 1950's

 

Dang.... I went throught school in the 60's ... and we had wide desk.....But I kinda remember some of them still having ink wells in them............

 

I went to elementary school in the mid-80s. All desks in my school still had ink well holes in them!

 

On handedness in general, this is a subject which fascinates me. I'm definitely right-handed, but I've noticed that there are a few things I do better with the left hand:

 

- pouring: I hold the glass with the right

- toothpaste: I hold the brush in the right, and am pretty much unable to dispense with the right

- washing hair: used to be the right, but has been left since I broke my right years ago

- rinsing dishes: I wash with the right, rinse with the left... and my rinsing abilities with the right are quite deficient

- opening milk cartons: I usually hold with the right, and use the left to deal with the spout, although I can do the reverse, too

- holding down objects: since I usually work on them with the right, the left is better at holding down

 

Most other things work better with the right. I can use the mouse almost as well with the left hand, since my wife is left-handed (in a totally non-ambidextrous way) and I can't be bothered to move it around. I can also eat perfectly fine with the left hand, for the same reason (if I'm sitting on the wrong side of her, eating with the left is much preferable to getting elbows in a knot). Neither of these feel quite completely natural, though I don't think that "performance" is significantly different.

 

I broke my arm around 16, and by the time it had healed, I was equally skilled in using the left hand as I had been in using the right hand, except for writing, which I never managed to do very well (it's legible, but I can't do it fast or well - it looks like an eight year old writing, and I suspect it would take a few years to look like an adult). Most things slowly gravitated back to the right hand after it healed. A few, like hair washing, didn't.

 

My overall theory, which I try to illustrate with the examples above, is one of specialisation. My right hand appears to be better at most things - until I try to use it for things I normally do with the left, and discover that it feels like using my left hand for things I normally do with the right. Dispensing toothpaste is the perfect example: doing it with the right hand is extremely clumsy and inaccurate. The obvious reason is that I normally do it with the left, since I hold the brush with the right. Of note, however, is that I'm left-eye dominant (probably due to astigmatism in the right), so maybe that affects things a bit - but I think that generally, the better hand is the one I learnt to do something with.

 

The most unusual case of ambidextrous behaviour I've seen is a colleague of mine: he's uses his left hand for all fine movements like writing, and the right hand for all macro movements. In a way, I think that this is just a more extreme case of what we all do, but it's very noticeable with him.

[ArtW]

Do you other lefties find it difficult to write with a fine or XF nib pen? For me, I can't use anything finer than a medium - the nib catches on the paper. Us lefties push the pen across the paper rather than pulling it as righties do.

When I was in elementary school in the early '60s, my second grade teacher (who also had been my father's second grade teacher around 1930), thought we should all learn to write with a dip pen - it was kind of a reward if you were good in class to go to the back table and practice penmanship with an old dip pen. About that time the teacher I had had in the first grade (who was a lefty - and old) decided I needed special instruction on left-handed penmanship, so she would get me out of my second grade class for about 1/2 hour a week for private instruction. How's that for dedicated teaching? In the 3rd grade, our teacher (also 'old') required us to write with a fountain pen, even though ball-point pens were readily available then. We spent many an hour learning to correctly form letters and write cursive. I've been a fountain pen user since then. My kids were barely given any instruction on how to form letters - and their writing shows it!

[funzoneplanet]

I'm right handed. I wish I was ambidexrous.

[alexanderino]

There were moments when I would try writing with my left hand, and it wasn't as dreadful as I expected it to be. I related this to my mother, who recalled I was left-handed during my lower kindergarten year. However, an upper kindergarten teacher considered it her duty to "correct" this. I have been right-handed since.

 

While I am grateful for instilling the value of decent penmanship, I occasionally wonder how different life would have turned out.

 

 

[konstantinos_d]

Quite interesting result there are 2-3x more left-handed responders to what one would expect in the general population, or is it just that left-handers would respond more easily about their left-handedness ?

 

Regrarding ambidextrous people, my grandfather was born left-handed in an era when teachers used to beat left-handed kids and tie their arms behind their backs in order for them to learn to use the "right" hand for wirting, hence with regards to writing he was fully ambidextrous.

 

As for the theories about brain damage and left-handed or ambidextrous people, after reviewing some of the literature for the univerity thesis (fMRI analysis of language lateralization), there is absolutely NO anatomopathological or neuroimaging evidence that left-handed/ambidextrous people have had any kind of brain damage at any stage of embryologic of fetal development. There is also strong correlation between handedness and hemispheric language allocation, left handed people tend to have language centres to the right hemisphere (instead of the left as right-handers tend to have), they also have higher rates of bilateral language allocation (both hemispheres activated) compared to right-handers. There are also rare individuals who are left-handed and have left hemisphere language areas and right-handed with right hemisphere language areas. For our research we use the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory to determine the degree of handedness (all left-handers are not equally left-handers, the same stands for right-handers) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to determine language lateralization after a series of language tests. Here you can find an example of the Edinburgh Inventory : http://www.cse.yorku.ca/course_archive/200...hInventory.html

Edited October 28, 2007 by konstantinos_d

[fatehbajwa]

I'm right handed.

[reginaldgolding]

Righthander here; but I've always wanted to be a lefty. In preschool, the righthanders were made to use the black-handled safety scissors, while the stylin' green-handled pairs were for leftys only.

[dcwaites]

I am right-handed, except when I am under a car, when I become ambidextrous.

 

When I belonged to a small-bore rifle club, we had a few members with left-handed rifles (the bolt handle is on the other side, and the butt and cheekpiece are set up for the left shoulder and left cheek).

One day we swapped rifles, the lefties using right-handed rifles and vice-versa. We all shot better than normal...

[purpledog]

hi

 

Like some folks here, I am born left handed, and started writing with my left hand. Silly as this may sound now, my mother thought left-handers would be slow learners and were less intelligent. So, she tried all means to make me write with my right hand, such as hitting my left hand with a stick whenever I was caught writing with my left hand (this happened like 30 years ago). And then, my characters were initially all laterally inverted, and this made my mother believe even more that left-handers were indeed less intelligent. So now I write with my right hand. I can still write with my left hand, but I am slower and the handwriting looks bad. I perform most daily functions with my left hand though, such as brushing teeth or picking up things, and aim better when throwing something into a basket with my left hand. But I play ping-pong with my right hand.

 

I read somewhere that forcing a person to change the hand that he or she uses for writing is not good, as this forces the person to use the less dominant side of the brain (right-brain dominant people using left hand, and vice versa). I don't know how true this is, but I did have some issues with learning in school in my first 2 years.

 

I am from Asia, where controlling the gear during driving requires the left hand, so I am not so sure if being right or left-handed will have any bearing on driving, since the majority of the people in the world are right-handers.

 

Not long ago, I came across an online newspaper article which can tell you which side of your brain is more dominant by how you see which direction an object turns. The test shows I use more of my right brain.

 

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...281-661,00.html

 

purpledog

Edited December 28, 2007 by purpledog

[frankt]

I'm right handed for things that require the use of one hand, writing, throwing a ball, brushing my teeth. When I started playing golf 8 years ago I played right handed for 2 years. My swing was jerky and my body usually hurt after playing. Then I tried left handed. My score didn't improve but my swing was smoother and my body liked it much better. I figured out that I must have mirrored my father on the farm and ended up favoring my left hand when using a shovel, broom, etc.

[ferannia]

Left handed. But, in first four grades in school we had to write with a fountain pen every homework, and all tests in a classroom, except mathematics where we used pencils. Fountain pens and a pencils were the only two writting instruments allowed. So, I had to find a way to write smoothly and without smudging. It was difficult, but I just had no choice. Today I am glad we had been forced to write with FP since I have no any problems with it like many other left handed people I met, who completed their school without ever (or rarely) touching the FP.

 

When it comes to penmanship, I noticed my style depends of my mood swing, and there are three basic styles; usually I write a regular school cursive, gentle italic. When I am happy, truly cheerful, or under wories and afraid, I write upright and tend to have broad letters. When I am very nervous or in a truly bad mood, ill tempered, I write extreme italic.

 

Edited for spelling...

Edited January 10, 2008 by ferannia

[retypepassword]

Not long ago, I came across an online newspaper article which can tell you which side of your brain is more dominant by how you see which direction an object turns. The test shows I use more of my right brain.

 

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...281-661,00.html

 

purpledog

Unfortunately, that test is a hoax, to paraphrase one of the article's comments. I looked at it, and found that, as the comment stated, "if you look closely and shed the ego, you can see the visual switch happening." Just take my word for it, unless you're willing to waste your time like I did, staring at the spinning woman to verify the comment's claim.

 

As for me, I was born left-handed, but forced to use my right hand before I ever learned to write...

[fitypoundpdog]

As with so many others here, I was retrained. Unfortunately for my teachers, they could get rid of almost all of my left-handed tendancies except writing.

 

I tend to do any fine motor skill with my left side (writing, painting, shooting (guns and billiards), etc.) and all of the gross motor skills with my right (throwing, kicking, etc.).

 

An interesting exception is racket (how do you spell raquet?) sports. I can play tennis, raquetball, badmitton, et al. equally well (or poorly depending on your point of view) with both hands.

 

Kevin

[Bluetiger]

I'm left handed and am an underwriter with the paper tilted almost 45 deg to the right, so in effect I appear to be writing downwards! My Son is also left handed but he rights with a hook and nothing I do has made him change the way he writes. He smudges EVERYTHING! I have had to buy him left handed scissors.

 

I use right handed scissors, I peel potatoes with my right hand but then switch hands to cut the chips (fries?) with my left. I have to slice bread using my left hand. I crochet with my right hand but knit lefthanded (so backwards!).

 

I went on the left handed website and bought myself a left handed ruler as after all these years I thought it would be fantastic - I can't use it! I am so used to drawing a 3cm line from 30cm to 27cm that I can't get my head round going from 0cm to 3cm! I also ordered a left handed chequebook from the bank - and constantly open it upside down as I'm so used to having a right handed one!

 

The only thing about that left handed website is that it has left me feeling annoyed about things I hadn't even realised - like my purse - when I open it to pay with a note, it's upside down and the open slot is at the bottom - never realised it before and now it has irritated me so much I have had to buy a new purse that just zips!

 

I also write with a backward slant and it is very neat but I am struggling writing calligraphy due to the usual right slant it has but I will perserver! I've also found a left handed calligraphy book on Amazon so I'm going to have a look at that too but my favourite style is Chancery Italic and that's right slanted!