Why lefties are handy at adapting - investigating handedness

By ALICE WYLLIE
Published on Sunday 5 February 2012 00:00

IT’S not all pain and frustration when you live in the looking glass world of the southpaw, writes Alice Wyllie

IT ALL started with a spiral-bound notebook. The sworn enemy of around 10 per cent of the population, they are to left-handers what low lintels are to tall people. As I drag my fist across the page, the sleeve of my shirt catches on the wire and tears from the elbow to the cuff, which was already sullied with tell-tale smudges of pencil lead.

I feel like just like Mr Burns in The Simpsons who, upon trying and failing to open a can exclaims: “Damned infernal gizmo! My kingdom for a left-handed can opener.” We’re fairly placid when it comes to fighting for our left rights, always quietly accepting that there is a status quo and it is right. But I’ve had enough.

In a fit of frustration, built up over a lifetime of being a left-handed person in a right-handed world, I flip my pad 180 degrees and begin to write from right to left. It’s surprisingly easy. It’s the way I should have been doing it all along. It’s what corrie-fisted Leonardo da Vinci did, and it’s like I’ve taken the red pill and now I can’t go back.

My wrist – which has spent the last 20 years forced into an uncomfortable hook when writing – drifts for the first time beneath my words. My fingers can grip the writing instrument between thumb and forefinger as God and my first teacher intended. Gone is the mangled claw I, along with lefties like Barack Obama and Prince William, have adopted. It’s all so straightforward, so smudge-free. I’ve switched between the two writing directions ever since.

Going through my pre-school drawings recently I noticed that on some of them I’d signed my name backwards. Perhaps it felt more natural to me, but of course by the time I was at school I had learned to go with the accepted flow when it came to writing. Today, the only way in which it feels unnatural to write from right to left is that I’m unused to it. But the more I do it, the quicker I get.

I’m not alone, of course. Chris McManus, a handedness expert and professor of psychology at University College London estimates that with Arabic and Urdu, among many other languages, written from right to left, around 35-40 per cent of the world writes in that direction.

“Why the western world writes from left to right is complex, and essentially, I suspect, arbitrary,” he says. “In my book, Right Hand Left Hand, there is a figure showing the directions of most scripts from early cuneiform onwards. There is no particular attraction to one direction or another, and some scripts change with time. Ancient Greek shifted some time in the 8th or 9th century BC from right-to-left to left-to-right for no known reason But that’s the reason that we and all ‘Roman’ scripts go from left to right.”

There are a number of theories as to why da Vinci chose to write from right to left, among them that he didn’t want to smudge his ink as he wrote. It is also said that he wanted to make it more difficult for people to read his notes so they couldn’t steal his ideas. Indeed, in order to read his writing, one must hold a mirror up to it.

His writing was perfect when read in a mirror, which is more than can be said for mine, which is a clumsy mix of letters written both the correct way and “backwards”. But I can understand it, and soon I’m taking notes in my own odd shorthand with impressive speed, raising more than a few eyebrows in meetings.

Before long, my new-found ability allows me to do something I thought I never would: purchase a fountain pen, long the scourge of the “southpaw” thanks to the unavoidable dark smears left on wrists, cuffs and fingers as one drags one’s hand across the wet ink.

I feel like a wounded veteran learning to walk again. As the nib of my new pen glides across the page, my hand pulling my words out, rather than pushing them, it’s as if I’m discovering how to write for the first time. I am an “overwriter” which means that my hand hooks awkwardly above my words when I write. It is both inelegant and difficult, involving a lot more movement in the hand, wrist and even arm than regular writing.

Writing from right to left immediately solves this problem, and has the added bonus of not making the writer look like they’ve just picked up a pen for the first time and aren’t quite sure what to do with it. Indeed it’s difficult to take Obama seriously when he’s photographed in the oval office signing some official document looking like a toddler manhandling a crayon.

Twenty-seven-year-old Rachel Campbell is a graphic designer from Glasgow. She draws both her ticks and her “N”s backwards, but writes from left to right. “The biggest problem I’ve come across is when I did a course in calligraphy for my degree,” she says. “Left-handed nibs do exist, but using a vat of ink and dragging your hand across the page doesn’t quite work out. I had to learn to write with my hand floating in the air and the lack of support for my wrist hurt towards the end of the day.”

Further proof that lefties are always quietly adapting. The Handedness Institute in Indiana compares being left-handed to that famous observation that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. We get on with things without complaining just as the 90 per cent do, but we’re doing everything backwards. Well, I’m kicking off my metaphorical heels and facing forwards from now on.

Of course, like da Vinci, I only write from right to left when writing for myself. Anything to be read by others I write normally, but with email and social networking our primary method of communicating by the written word, I rarely find myself writing something by hand which I intend to be read by others. I’m getting more and more used to my new approach, but I do wonder if it’s a rather extreme solution.

Like most left-handed children I was never taught how to adapt to a right-handed world, but rather stumbled along figuring it out for myself, hence the inky fist. I can’t use scissors in my left hand because I had no choice but to hold them in my right hand at school, and if I write with my right, it feels, in some ways, more natural than with my left because I can hold my pen properly. So is there an alternative?

“If you feel more comfortable writing from right to left it’s probably because you can see what you’re writing,” says Diane Paul, the author of The Left-Handed Handbook. “When left-handers start at the left of the page, they have to push the pen across their body so it covers the writing. Some make the ‘hook’ and pull their hand along the top of the paper so they can see what they’re writing. Teachers don’t usually show them how to write, so they cover up the page with their hand. I used to have to write standing up. Instead, if you put the paper out to the left of your body’s midline and tilt it slightly to the right, you will be able to write with no problem.”

I try it. It works, but it changes my handwriting so it slopes backwards, not forwards. I wish I’d been shown it as a child, in which case my writing might have developed naturally around it, but I’m not sure it’s for me. Plus, while I’m sure there’s not a teacher in the western world who would encourage it, I secretly enjoy the mystery of writing from right to left.

Da Vinci used the technique to jot down detailed notes on everything from flying machines and tanks to scuba-diving equipment, notes which no-one but he could decipher.

Whether my notebooks contain anything worth plundering is certainly up for debate, but since no-one else can read them, well, I can just pretend that they do.

Lefty luxuries

Purses

When a left-handed person opens their purse or wallet, it’s facing the wrong way, with cards and cash upside down and often falling out. In a left-handed purse, everything is facing the “right” way.

Watches

We tend to wear our watches on the wrist of the hand we don’t write with. Fine for right-handed people for whom the little knob to wind the watch is on the right. Left-handers must either reach around to the other side of the watch face to wind their watch, wear it on their left wrist or invest in a left-handed watch, which has the knob on the left side and the numbers going anti-clockwise around the face.

Keyboards

Rather than have to use one’s right hand to access the number and arrow keys on a keyboard, this lefty gadget allows users to type with their left.

Playing cards

When left-handers fan out playing cards, they can’t see the numbers since they’re on only two corners of the card. Left-handed cards have the numbers on all four corners so that they’re visible to both left and right-handed players.

Measuring tapes

If a lefty pulls a rolled-up measuring tape out of its case, the numbers will be upside down. With a left-handed tape measure, the numbers read the right way round.

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SlowNeutron

Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 02:39 AM

My only real complaint about being left handed is pens in banks. It's bad enough that the banks put the pens on the right but then they stick them down and add short chains that won't even reach to the left. ---- Having said that, I never felt opressed by the world at all, certainly not enough to want a left-handed life manual.

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kateluke

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:37 PM

I must have been very lucky growing up lefthanded as I write naturally without the "hook" and am often complimented on my writing. I am, however, also able to do just about everything except write with my right hand. I know people who were forced to use their right hand and who have, today, a horrible scrawl. It is such as shame as this seriously affects a person's self-confidence and creativity.

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AnnieDaneseThomassen

Sunday, February 5, 2012 at 02:34 PM

It's nice to see more and more articles about left-handedness. I am a lefty and have spent 20 years researching the causes and consequences of being Left-handed and have compiled my research in a small self-help manual titled, "Left-Handed But Not Left Behind, A Positive Approach for the Left-handed Student." I am respected among the education community as an expert in my field. My book contains: 1. The most up-to-date research on the causes and consequences of being Left-handed. 2. A writing method and a cursive alphabet just for lefties to teach the left-handed student to write without the classic "lefty hook". 3. Valuable information on how to nurture a Lefty to be an overcomer in a right-side dominant world. 4. Interviews with celebrity Lefties on what it was like for them to be a Lefty, i.e. Dick Smother's of the Smother's Brothers and Tino Wallenda of the famous "Flying Wallendas". 5. Why Handwriting is important to develop important elements such as the kinesthetic, auditory and visual.

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