A poll of 'handedness' & writing english right to left

[skellious]

As a lefty I, like many of my fellow leftys here (has anyone ever taken a poll to find out the handedness of our population here? - if not please complete the one above) suffer from the problem of smudgeing something you have jsut written, or not being able to see what you are writing. I know some people adopt overcrook pen-holding styles but this does not work for me. My hand writing is bad to the point that my old Biology teacher often reffered to my work as being written "in middle english".

All that is more or less interesting but my real question to you all is, has anyone here ever attempted to write in right to left fashion as a solution to this, and if so what were your conclusions and what solutions did you come up with to overcome awkward letter-shapes? I myself now tend to do most writing on the computer than goodness, I dont know what I'd do without one. use a typewriter, I suppose...

When i attempted this, half my letters came out "reversed" and half the "correct" way round. ideally, these should all be "back to front" because the words are being read right to left.

This post may be largely futile but its 2am so I'm posting it anyway. Hopefully the poll will help validate it.

[Sheikh al-Majaneen]

I'm a lefty.

I got in trouble in my high school calculus class for writing out exercises on the blackboard from right to left. the letters came out backwards, but I wanted them to.

In retrospect, I don't see why I did that.

Some self-teaching has shown me how much easier it is to write clearly and unsmudgedly in farsi.

[skellious]

I'm a lefty.

I got in trouble in my high school calculus class for writing out exercises on the blackboard from right to left. the letters came out backwards, but I wanted them to.

In retrospect, I don't see why I did that.

I can see why you did, and to be honest for mathmatics it matters still less on the flow direction, provided it is consistant. I'm tempted to do maths right to left from now on. It seems perfectly logical to me.

[lulzfish]

I only write left-handed.
I write some things right-to-left, but I reverse the letter order so it looks correct.
And I only use it to right-justify things. It's not useful for actual writing.

[Izawwlgood]

I'm not really surprised to see how high the lefty lefty count is here.
*Wikipedia sez:

Left-handedness is relatively uncommon; seven to ten percent of the adult population is left-handed.

We shall rule the world.

[skellious]

I'm not really surprised to see how high the lefty lefty count is here.

Yes I had a theory about that too, hence the poll. The exact details of the theory will be disclosed if it turns out to be true, as is my perogative as a scientist to bury research that went nowhere...

[Lazar]

As a lefty I, like many of my fellow leftys here (has anyone ever taken a poll to find out the handedness of our population here? - if not please complete the one above) suffer from the problem of smudgeing something you have jsut written, or not being able to see what you are writing. I know some people adopt overcrook pen-holding styles but this does not work for me. My hand writing is bad to the point that my old Biology teacher often reffered to my work as being written "in middle english".

One interesting thing is the fact that the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have managed to flourish even though they would appear to pose similar problems for us righties. I've taught myself the basic Hebrew characters, but other than that, I don't know much about handwriting practices for Semitic scripts.

[Nath]

I'm right handed. I used my normal pen grip to write Arabic, and didn't have issues with smudging. Though I guess I was mostly using ball-point pens.

I can't vouch for my Arabic handwriting, but it looked clear enough to me.

[skellious]

As a lefty I, like many of my fellow leftys here (has anyone ever taken a poll to find out the handedness of our population here? - if not please complete the one above) suffer from the problem of smudgeing something you have jsut written, or not being able to see what you are writing. I know some people adopt overcrook pen-holding styles but this does not work for me. My hand writing is bad to the point that my old Biology teacher often reffered to my work as being written "in middle english".

One interesting thing is the fact that the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have managed to flourish even though they would appear to pose similar problems for us righties. I've taught myself the basic Hebrew characters, but other than that, I don't know much about handwriting practices for Semitic scripts.

Those alphabets, despite being written right to left, were still developed for right-handers and are often easier to form right-handed.

[Secateurs]

Left-handed when I write, but for other things (throwing a ball, using scissors, playing Wii ) I use both hands equally. I've tried about three times to start learning to write with my right hand, but I always get bored and give up.
I don't bother with trying not to smudge my schoolwork. Usually my essays just come out with a cloud of blue over the top of the writing, but you can still read it.
I can write right-to-left though, either mirror-style or normal (as in, I write the words so that anybody would think I've written left-to-right, I start at the end of the word, but I only use this for single lines).

On the topic of others with left-handedness, my maths teacher and one other person in my class was left-handed. Apart from that, when people are in the same class as me for the first time, they generally look over and say, "Wow, are you left-handed?" as though they've never seen anyone else who was left-handed.

Oh, I remember reading somewhere that writing with your right hand is usually faster than writing with your left hand. If there are any ambidextrous people around (lucky!) can they comment on this?

[olubunmi]

If you have problems with smudging you should use a different pen :P

Ambidextrous here. I used to be left handed, but I had a long lasting injury, so I had to learn to write with my right hand.
I mainly write with my right hand now, but slowly my left-handwriting gets more legible again.

A few years ago, 7 out of 25 people in my class were left-handed btw. That was awesome.

[skellious]

On the topic of others with left-handedness, my maths teacher and one other person in my class was left-handed. Apart from that, when people are in the same class as me for the first time, they generally look over and say, "Wow, are you left-handed?" as though they've never seen anyone else who was left-handed.

Oh, I remember reading somewhere that writing with your right hand is usually faster than writing with your left hand. If there are any ambidextrous people around (lucky!) can they comment on this?

Yes, it IS ammusing, the FIRST FIFETEEN TIMES someone says that..... then it starts to wear....

Yep, writing with your right hand is useually faster becuase you are not having to 'push' the pen so often to create the righthand-bias letterforms. every joining strokem, neat little bit in cursive is designed to make things flow for a right-hander.... which naturally has the opposite effect for a lefty.

Edit: Taking a look at the poll count, it doesn't spurprise me it's trending towards 50:50 at the moment, although of course this poll could be subject to some obscure for of observer bias, due perhaps to more leftys clicking on and completeing the poll or linguistics section just being unusually well-dominated by us.

[Monika]

Left-handed first graders (or in the US, kindergarten students) tend to write from right to left at first. My little sister did this, too, she's not left-handed but she sees a lot less on the right eye than on the left.

Left-handed first graders (/kindergartners) are also impeded in learning math because everything is targetted at right-handed people. Examples: Graphical displays for learning numbers are always oriented from left to right. Calculations like 2 + 3 = 5 are not understood as bidirectional equalities until let's say 8th grade or so when equation solving starts, in the beginning years it's always meant as "have 2, add 3 more, get 5", so it's to be read strictly from left to right. (My granny was a primary school teacher and had materials about this problem.)

[skellious]

Left-handed first graders (or in the US, kindergarten students)

Or in most of the UK [well, England and Wales], "Reception". (just trying to understand why you wrote "or in the US" because I don't know where else says "grade" but I am not saying you are wrong and if someone can help correct me ill be more than glad of it.)

[Monika]

Well, like let's say first grade in Germany, France, Denmark, Poland and so on and so on ... any of the countries where children actually start to learn to read and write in the first year of primary school / elementary school (if their parents or older siblings or whoever didn't choose to teach them at home) and there is no "kindergarten" year, "0th grade" or something similar before that is kind of part of school, but not quite and not required, but almost everybody attends it, and where children start to learn to read and write, so those who enter first grade without knowing the alphabet and at least some reading and writing are definitely considered to be "behind" and would probably end up in a special education class. Of course we don't say "grade" in Germany, we say "Klasse", but when we talk about it in English, we would translate it as "first grade" or "first form" ... depending on if we are using American or British English. (I used to use British English because that's what we are mainly taught in school, but after my US high school year I had switched to American English.)

I knew British children enter primary school at 4.5 or 5 years, because one of the British host families I lived with had a five-year old son who came home in school uniform and his mum explained it to me. I wasn't aware the first year was called "reception". I thought it's "form 1".

[skellious]

as I say, depends on the school, many private school use the form system still. Most school only use it for ages 17 and 18, "sixth form"

Sorry I was having a weird day when i posted about this, I was being far too nit-picking.

[Monika]

A weird day? It was this morning .

So what do the non-private schools call the forms 1 to 6 in primary school and the forms 1 to 5 in secondary school?

[skellious]

the equivilant state school system in england and wales is reception (age 4 or 5, some private schools dont have this year) then year 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. secondary is 7,8,9,10,11 then "sixth form" (as with private schools, this is two years, "lower" and "upper" sixth, due to not everyone progressing into it because they leave instead. Traditionally tutor groups in sixth form are mixed between both years so you will have people a year above or below you in your form room for these two years.) which is optional and composed of years 12 and 13. F in northern ireland they have the same number of years but dont use the term reception so it's year 1 - 14. I think scotland uses forms still but im unsure.

And it WAS yesterday for me because I have a really odd sleeping schedule. I sleep 5.30 am to 3-4pm, been on it since christmas but im hoping to change it tonight.... my third attempt.... wish me luck

[Rilian]

I remember when they were "teaching" us writing in Kindergarten, and they had those arrows telling you which way to draw the lines. I already knew how to write, but the teacher said we had to follow the arrows, so I watched how she did it, and she was right-handed, so then apparently my brain mirror-imaged it, and I wrote all the letters backwards without meaning to.

I used to write often, and I always write in pencil. After several pages, my hand, the part of my hand that touches the paper, would be all covered in the graphite or whatever. I've always thought it was cool. I've never had a problem with writing, though. People have asked me, is it hard because you can't see what you just wrote. No, it's not hard at all.

It's funny, everyone always acts so amazed that I am left handed that I have come to see it as something amazing myself, and it can actually be a point of bonding between two left-handed people.

Edit: Taking a look at the poll count, it doesn't spurprise me it's trending towards 50:50 at the moment, although of course this poll could be subject to some obscure for of observer bias, due perhaps to more leftys clicking on and completeing the poll or linguistics section just being unusually well-dominated by us.

I see no reason why linguistics as a field would be populated with left-handed people. It's an analytical task, which supposedly, allegedly, is done by the left side of the brain.

[skellious]

Did your school not have a system in place for dealing with lefties? A lot of schools in the UK are good about it now and make sure to not accidentally teach lefties to write incorrectly. The thing that always annoied and continues to annoy me is worksheets and forms are often prineted with the question on the left and answer space on the right. I cant see the question while writing which I need to because I occasionally have a memory problem and need to frequently check back to the question to answer it properly. My bank gives me a left-handed cheque book, why cant school and uk.gov give me left-handed forms and worksheets?

[vaguelyhumanoid]

I'm left-handed, but I feel comfortable with right-handed mice, etc.
I've never wrote English right-to-left, though, unless I'm trying to explain how abjads work or something.

[skellious]

I'm left-handed, but I feel comfortable with right-handed mice, etc.
I've never wrote English right-to-left, though, unless I'm trying to explain how abjads work or something.

Yes, from my father being lefthanded and my use of comptuers mainly at school I have ended up using mice whichever way they have been left. I tend towards right-handed at home to save having to swap things around but I would be equally happy using them left handed, apart from for games because I like WASD now and although it would not be a problem after a few days to play using the mirror of controls I prefer the setup right handed becuase the keys are not symmetrical.

[RabbitWho]

It's too late to reverse it, our eye paths are set in stone and if we reverse then all pictures will need to be flipped and when people go to art galleries they will need to bring mirrors with them.

[skellious]

It's too late to reverse it, our eye paths are set in stone and if we reverse then all pictures will need to be flipped and when people go to art galleries they will need to bring mirrors with them.

duuuuuude... what???

[RabbitWho]

It's too late to reverse it, our eye paths are set in stone and if we reverse then all pictures will need to be flipped and when people go to art galleries they will need to bring mirrors with them.

duuuuuude... what???

Fine art in the west is built around the assumption that your eyes naturally start on the left and work their way right, and artists take this into account. For example it's why you're more likely to see a blank space on the left and all the action on the right than the other way around.
In countries where people read right to left all the rules are reversed. Up to down vs. down to up effects it somewhat too I imagine.


Oh I just realized this is going to seem irrelevant.. left handed people will vouch for the inconvenience of writing left to right, as your hand rubs off what you've just written instead of the blank page.



Also on assumptions about the different brains of left and right-handed people.. I think it's nonsense.. I went to art college and there weren't any more or less lefties than anywhere else BUT something like half of us were dyslexic. There's something in that!

[skellious]

It's too late to reverse it, our eye paths are set in stone and if we reverse then all pictures will need to be flipped and when people go to art galleries they will need to bring mirrors with them.

duuuuuude... what???

Fine art in the west is built around the assumption that your eyes naturally start on the left and work their way right, and artists take this into account. For example it's why you're more likely to see a blank space on the left and all the action on the right than the other way around.
In countries where people read right to left all the rules are reversed. Up to down vs. down to up effects it somewhat too I imagine.

ooo this is cool, I did not know this. Also I am half asleep and so my language skills have regressed somewhat, hence my last post.

When I take photographs of people with a large open landscape in the background, I always prefer to position the person on the left of the picture, (looking into it, obviously, unless going for something majorly artzy.) Would this be left-to-right or right to left? does it depend on what the main subject is? the view or the person?

[Monika]

We learned that in art class in school, too, when we dealt with Albrecht Dürer's Apokalypse ... the riders are going from left to right: http://12koerbe.de/apokalypse/apo-04.htm . I recall our teacher saying that if the picture were inversed, we would get the impression that they were running away.

[RabbitWho]

It's too late to reverse it, our eye paths are set in stone and if we reverse then all pictures will need to be flipped and when people go to art galleries they will need to bring mirrors with them.

duuuuuude... what???

Fine art in the west is built around the assumption that your eyes naturally start on the left and work their way right, and artists take this into account. For example it's why you're more likely to see a blank space on the left and all the action on the right than the other way around.
In countries where people read right to left all the rules are reversed. Up to down vs. down to up effects it somewhat too I imagine.

ooo this is cool, I did not know this. Also I am half asleep and so my language skills have regressed somewhat, hence my last post.

It's okay, what I said was very disjointed, i forgot as usual that people can't read my mind.

When I take photographs of people with a large open landscape in the background, I always prefer to position the person on the left of the picture, (looking into it, obviously, unless going for something majorly artzy.) Would this be left-to-right or right to left? does it depend on what the main subject is? the view or the person?

Well it depends on the person looking at it, so for most people from our culture they'll see the man first and then what he's looking at, but for most people who read arabic they'll see the scenery first and then the man looking at it. It's really up to you which you prefer.
People seem to like pictures where their eyes move around a lot, and it's important that every resting point has something interesting in it. Like say you're talking to someone and you look away so as not to be staring at them, your eyes will naturally run towards a corner. Something about lines...
I mean if I did > this. It's obvious to you that > is pointing towards this and not back to did. Why? It's not just a symbol like a letter of the alphabet, arrows have universal significance and to my knowlage there's no culture where < points right and > points left.
this unfortunately is also true of cleavage... I often want to say "Look, don't flatter yourself, it's just with that shirt you've basically formed a big arrow pointing to your crotch.

[Sir Novelty Fashion]

I'm both left-handed and dyspraxic, so my handwriting is (maybe unsurprisingly) atrocious. To the point that someone once asked if I was writing in demotic.

I write like everyone else does, thoguh I may hold the pen so that my hand doesn't trail-and-smudge quite so much. What's really odd is that I write in Egyptian from left-to-right, too, when in theory both are acceptable (as well as top to bottom horizontally, going left to right, IIRC). Force of habit, I suppose.

Given the existence of boustrophedon, I'd guess that handedness has very little to do with writing-direction.

[skellious]

can I ask if you have been actually diagnosed with dispraxia or have dedued it yourself? and also what symptoms to you show. I know everyone is different but I was diagnosed with dyslexia many years ago but I am quite sure I have dispraxia and would like to compare, if that is ok?.

[Sir Novelty Fashion]

I was diagnosed shortly before taking GCSEs, I think.

As to symptoms, sure, I can list a few. In physical terms, poor hand-eye co-ordination, a lack of fine motor skill (leading to a degree of clumsiness, and compounding issues with handwriting, etc), occasional problems with speaking - I may slur/foul up on the occasional word (I do mean occasional), and it does depend a lot on how much I'm speaking.

In terms of mental faculties, symptoms applying to me include poor short-term memory, poor organisational skills, particularly those involving sequencing and breaking down a task into smaller constituent jobs, but also affecting the ability to keep a coherent sequence in work or in a line of thought. Weak time management is also an issue. And as a rule of thumb it seems to take me about half as much time again on top of the amount of time it would take a non-dyspraxic to perform any given task.

That's probably an incomplete list. There's a more expansive list of symptoms here, but the article seems to be very heavily focussed on the physical impact of dyspraxia.

[skellious]

bloody hell you just described me too. I'm almost certain I have this now. I'm going to be assessed for uni anyway because I had special arrangements in exams at school so we shall see then.

[Bobber]

You just described half of the human population. People forget shit, they're poor at organizing stuff, they slur occasional words etc. I'm skeptical towards the idea that these are symptoms of a specific condition. I am far from contesting the existence of dyspraxia: I just don't see how these specific symptoms would warrant a diagnosis.

[skellious]

You just described half of the human population. People forget shit, they're poor at organizing stuff, they slur occasional words etc. I'm skeptical towards the idea that these are symptoms of a specific condition. I am far from contesting the existence of dyspraxia: I just don't see how these specific symptoms would warrant a diagnosis.

There is a difference, sure people forget things, but there is a great degree of memory ability, ranging from "superhuman" to "normal" to "really poor" (which is where the spectrum starts to come in) and right down to alzheimers and conditions where people have the inability to form new memories.

The point is the degree to which it effects your life. I take it you are from the camp that dislikes labelling people? While it is a bad idea to label people when those labels have no use, when someone has a disability/ special needs that means they have special requirements then a name helps make the process faster than having to describe all the symptoms each time.

I also recognise that we have some Barnum statements here and this is why testing confirms a diagnosis.

[Xanthir]

As a lefty I, like many of my fellow leftys here (has anyone ever taken a poll to find out the handedness of our population here? - if not please complete the one above) suffer from the problem of smudgeing something you have jsut written, or not being able to see what you are writing. I know some people adopt overcrook pen-holding styles but this does not work for me. My hand writing is bad to the point that my old Biology teacher often reffered to my work as being written "in middle english".

One interesting thing is the fact that the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have managed to flourish even though they would appear to pose similar problems for us righties. I've taught myself the basic Hebrew characters, but other than that, I don't know much about handwriting practices for Semitic scripts.

Those alphabets, despite being written right to left, were still developed for right-handers and are often easier to form right-handed.

That said, my own experience with talking to people who write hebrew and arabic is that it's still sorta weird for a right-hander. You have to hold either your pen or your paper differently than what you would do for english, to keep your hand out of the way.

[skellious]

As a lefty I, like many of my fellow leftys here (has anyone ever taken a poll to find out the handedness of our population here? - if not please complete the one above) suffer from the problem of smudgeing something you have jsut written, or not being able to see what you are writing. I know some people adopt overcrook pen-holding styles but this does not work for me. My hand writing is bad to the point that my old Biology teacher often reffered to my work as being written "in middle english".

One interesting thing is the fact that the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have managed to flourish even though they would appear to pose similar problems for us righties. I've taught myself the basic Hebrew characters, but other than that, I don't know much about handwriting practices for Semitic scripts.

Those alphabets, despite being written right to left, were still developed for right-handers and are often easier to form right-handed.

That said, my own experience with talking to people who write hebrew and arabic is that it's still sorta weird for a right-hander. You have to hold either your pen or your paper differently than what you would do for english, to keep your hand out of the way.

Im guessing though that they were raised in a western country? And so might have learnt a western script at the same time or earlier?

[Promac]

I'm ambi but I use different hands for different tasks. Writing is mostly right-handed as it's faster, unless I'm doing it at work, in which case I'll use my right for the mouse and my left to take notes or scribble ideas.

I investigated having 2 mice attached to my computer so that I could use both at once as I felt like I was wasting a whole hand a lot of the time. Especially when doing graphics work like photoshop. Windows is just not set up for that though and the little 3rd party software that caters for it just doesn't work. Having 2 computers with 2 screens and 2 mice just isn't practical.

[skellious]

I'm ambi but I use different hands for different tasks. Writing is mostly right-handed as it's faster, unless I'm doing it at work, in which case I'll use my right for the mouse and my left to take notes or scribble ideas.

I investigated having 2 mice attached to my computer so that I could use both at once as I felt like I was wasting a whole hand a lot of the time. Especially when doing graphics work like photoshop. Windows is just not set up for that though and the little 3rd party software that caters for it just doesn't work. Having 2 computers with 2 screens and 2 mice just isn't practical.

wow, what a talent! and that would be so cool, two mice (or graphics tablet and mouse)

[Cecily]

I'm ambi but I use different hands for different tasks... I'll use my right for the mouse and my left to take notes or scribble ideas... I investigated having 2 mice attached to my computer.

You sound like me. I like the idea of two mice, but I suspect it would be like trying to pat one's head and rub one's stomach. However, my normal mode is mouse or touchpad in my left hand and pen in the right (except when I have all fingers on the keyboard), and I don't get muddled with that.

When I was at school I became more proficient writing with my left hand because I livened up very poorly taught history lessons by taking all my notes that way, but although I can still write with it, it's very messy nowadays.

[turret]

I'm left handed, and occasionally have to write in Arabic. To be honest, English left to write is much easier for me. I suppose it's all about how used to it you are, and I must concur that using a computer is by far the easiest way for me to write. (I also hate smudging my hand whenever I'm using an ink pen.)