I'm a righty, though I can do some things with both, like bowling and batting. My father is ambidextrous in his writing, which I thought was so cool when I was a kid - but try as I might, I could never do it.

What the UK calls a "doddle," the USA calls a "snap" or a "cinch."

Lefty!

lefty, as far as writing is concerned. i can write with my right, but its not as legible since i dont practice it.

Hi! New to this forum. Found it when I decided to improve my chicken scratch writing. Yep, I am a lefty too and hopefully I can share my experiences with how or if I improve it. Just ordered "Write Now" and hope it works.

Being a lefty rocks! Yeah writing sucks and scissors don't work for us, but we do have something special. Scientists say that each side of the body is controlled by the opposite side of the brain.

In other words, lefties are always in the "right" state of mind

I'm a rightwriter. Yippee!!

On the subject of ambidexterity, (if such a word-variation exists), I had a friend named James in school, he was ambidextris, but his writing was TERRIBLE. I remember for SIX LONG YEARS all our teachers would despair having to read his handwriting because it was so messy.

I will admit that until a few years ago, I did not understand why schools in earlier times forced lefthanders to write with their right hands, until I remembered the fact that they used nib-pens and fountain pens back then and that a lefthander would smudge the ink as he/she/it wrote across the page from left to right. My dad used to tell me stories about that sort of stuff,(my dad's a right-hander), about how when he was in school, the teachers used to whack lefthanders on their wrists with rulers to make them switch hands.

It's not easy doing that. I tried once. My writing wasn't even writing. Just horrible scribbles....

I'm a lefty, or "South Paw" if you prefer. Being left handed was actually one of the main reasons originally that I switched from pencils to pens in my youth. I'm often an overwriter, so I would tend drag my hand across everything that I wrote causing my hand to be covered in lead in very short order. Switching to pens helped reduce that problem quite a bit. Now I'm almost 30 and I still have some of the bad penmanship habits I developed in my youth, many of them intentionally because I didn't want to write the way they told me I was supposed to (ah, the rebellion of youth), so it's up to me to now try and break years of bad habits, but there's no time like the present to start, right?

Righty!

People who regard themselves as ambidextrous have brain damage and are not born that way (like lefthanders or righthanders). According to this article are ambidextrous people 1) the result of the converting of a left-hander (a functional brain damage); or (2) the result of perinatal cerebral damage in the dominant cerebral hemisphere.

After all the things that have been said about lefthanders in "studies" I'm not taking just one article about ambidextrous people being brain damaged too serious. Maybe I'm very ignorant in my common sence but to me it seems illogical that people that are better in something than the majory (i.e. being able to use both hands well rather that just one) are brain damaged.

So many things have been claimed about handedness, a lot with studies backing it up only to be disproven later that I've become quite skeptical about it.

Just recently there was a study about lefthanded women dying younger from cancer or circulatory diseases.
Study done by a team from University Medical Centre Utrecht.

quote from the email I got from anythingleft-handed.co.uk:


To me it seems that with 10% being lefthanded they have compared 25 lefthanded with 25 righthanded women. And they had their pick of 225 righthanded women.

I'm not saying that this ambidextrous study was done this badly, just that I find it rather curious that scientists are spending time on these sort of things when there are still so many serious illnesses without a cure.

Speaking as a psychologist and neuroscientist, I would like to clarify that ambidextrous people are _not_ brain-damaged! The article you posted is not from any typical journal I am aware of; it takes complex evidence, misinterprets it, distorts research findings, and spits out oversimplified and misguided conclusions.

What we understand so far about ambidextrous people, is that they have a greater degree of cross-hemisphere communication and greater activity in the corpus collossum than right handers (and than some, though not all left-handers). As a result, their brains look different, when studied via neuroimaging, than standard brains. But this difference does not imply brain damage. The brains of cab drivers look different from the brains of non-cab rivers for instance, the brains of artists look different from the brains of scientists, etc. I don't mean to sound adamant or aggressive about this, but this topic is actually something in which I have direct research experience.

QM2

That's a very reasonable attitude; however, being equally adept with either hand doesn't necessarily mean that one is better with both hands than a dominant-handed person is with their one dominant hand. The skills might just be evened out, so that you can do more with either hand than a dominant-handed person can do with their off hand, but less than they can do with their dominant hand. We often hear about compensatory skills (for instance, a person who is blinded in an accident acquires an almost preternatural sense of hearing), so it wouldn't be surprising if a person who was originally, say, right-handed but had some brain damage in that part of their brain would develop compensatory skills for what was previously their off hand.

Although, to be honest, if they consider conversion of handedness to be "functional" brain damage, one has to wonder what isn't brain damage. Maybe learning is also brain damage--after all, it's a change in the way your brain is wired (any experience does that), and some learning is certainly damaging to you. I note that the article is not from a medical journal (at least not directly from one), based on its URL, so it might very well be inaccurate in reporting the conclusions of the original paper (assuming there was one).



I don't think it's clear to me that they did that--I think one would have to go back to the original study to check.

Generally speaking, general media articles (such as newspapers or especially most Web sites) that describe studies do an atrocious job of reporting the methodology of the study (which is understandable, because most people are bored to tears by methodology). So the fact that an article doesn't describe the methodology says (I think) more about the article than about the study. There are some pretty well-performed studies demonstrating correlations between handedness and various disorders. That doesn't mean that handedness helps to determine these things--only that there is a statistically higher likelihood of having certain disorders if one is left-handed.



Although a lot of money should be (and is) spent on research directed specifically toward finding cures to the many diseases that plague us, it is reasonable that some money be spent on research that is at least partly speculative. You simply don't know for sure where the next cure will come from. That's not to say that there aren't garbage studies (believe me, I've read them), but this one doesn't smell like one of them. After all, handedness is known to be partially genetically determined, and identifying an association between the genetics of handedness and the genetics of various disorders sounds like useful knowledge to go after. It doesn't sound quite like a fishing expedition.

Incidentally, I don't work in the medical fields and have no affiliation with any of these studies, though I do work in math/science/engineering (I'm a computer networks researcher).

Oh yes, the thread topic: I'm right-handed. I'm also left-footed, and left-eyed. My sister, on the other hand, is left-handed, right-footed, and right-eyed. Go figure.

I'm ambidextrous. My right-hand writing isn't quite as nice as my left-hand writing, but that's because I prefer my left for writing. I do a lot of other things right-handed, though. And for sports or crafts (like sewing) I frequently switch off dominant hands just to keep one from getting too tired.

I don't find this curious at all. This because most things are designed for the majority of people (and this means for righthanders of course). If we talk about fountain pens (and that's what's this forum about), it's not really different. The majority of pens on the market are designed for use by the same majority of people. It seems that about 10-15% of the population is left handed, but the amount of pens on the market designed for lefthanders is much smaller. It also seems that left handed people do suffer more injuries and accidents because of this (but not every scholar agrees). I know for example of an insurance company that insures people in the medical profession. This company offers hand insurance for people like surgeons. However, the risks are, according to this insurance company, higher for lefthanders. That's why they pay left handed surgeons 25% less when they have certain fingers damaged. So, it could be very interesting to know more about the mechanisms of left handedness and why there is such a thing as ambidexterity (or not). It could in the end lead to better and safer products. Maybe it could also lead to the 'ultimate' fountain pen for left handed people or ambidextrous people.

My ambidextrious friend was an albino, I reckon, but that's not a mental problem.

I write and use a fork, toothbrush etc. with my left hand but everything else I use my right hand, arm or leg. I suppose my writing could be better if I was right handed but it is quite legible and even nice looking when I want it to. All in all avergae I suppose. Though if I really want to write something nice, I use a calligraphy pen. (I never practice calligraphy, but even if you write slowly and emphasize letters with it, it will still look really nice.

Good question.

I find that I write well with my right and slightly below passable with my left But at the same time I have an annoying habit of switching hand when playing tennis as well as ping pong & when I played racketball I'd try to switch. So I guess I'm situationally ambidextrous

K

I am severly right handed and my wife is left handed but can swing a golf club and bowl right handed. In grade school they did have her forced into using her right hand but it didn't "stick". She can still write right handed but not as quick.

I kick with my left foot and write with my right hand. Does that count as ambidextrous? Just kidding...

I write and do most tasks with my right hand. However, I shoot left handed. Not really sure why...

I'm right handed. My Dad and brother are also right handed. My Mum is left handed.

It's not so strange that there have been a greater proportion of left-handed people responding to the poll - I would imagine left-handed people would be more likely to vote, since as a minority, they are more conscious of the issue. Interesting learning about life from the perspectives of the left-handed!

I didn't see your response before typing mine - I said the same thing! I suppose our brain waves must be in phase ...

I'm not sure that the population can be extracted from the people on the FPN site and then a smaller subset of the people who posted to this poll. I would bet that it might as shown before indicate that there is a greater prevelence of left handers who use FPs. But that might be obscured by the sample size as a sub-sub-sub set of the population


Interesting none the less.

K

My Grandpa was like that - he writes and throws overhand using his right hand, since he was "broken" in school.

However, he does many other things - as well as throwing underhand - with his left hand.

Some things, he seems to do with either one.

So, is he semi-ambidextrous?

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 borderline ambidextrous, and consider myself therefore doubly gifted, first to be a lefty and second to have improved upon that exalted state.

I was "born" left-handed, in the sense that I simply chose that hand most often for subtle tasks. But also right-footed, for in soccer I initially preferred to take set pieces that way. My left foot is a very close second to my right foot, sometimes even more adept, making me very useful in soccer. My right hand is not far off my left hand, though the discrepancy between the hands is greater than that between the feet. And I had to "teach" my right hand to catch up. So I consider myself functionally ambidextrous in soccer and most sports. I would hold a tennis racket in my left hand, am utterly undecided about a hockey stick, can bat either way in baseball, and can throw equally accurately with both but would put the glove on my right because my left is stronger (as in, "power" not "accuracy") so would presumably have a greater range. I hate golf so I'd probably put the club in the car and drive to the beach if you offered it to me to see which hand I would want to swing with.

My writing is LEGIBLE but extremely poor with my right hand. I can do the reverse-script thing (or, of course, the forward normal thing) with my left hand.

I'm a little surprised at the notion that left-handedness (or ANY handedness, for that matter) is still being considered a "problem" or an "anomaly." We have humans with green hair walking this planet and yet such an obviously genetic, innocuous situation is considered worthy of further "scientific study" in order to determine its "detriments and benefits"? What the heck! Sounds like some SERIOUSLY hung-up scientists. The court case in "To Kill a Mockingbird" hinges on the defendant's left-handedness, come to think of it. I find it hard to believe that any handedness issue would correlate with risk of death outside of operation of seriously dangerous heavy machinery. A simple neurological status -- identical to that which determines whether people prefer dancing over singing, or banana or bread pudding -- is all that handedness is. Nobody's studying whether or not bread-pudding eaters die early, are they?

Scissors are the biggest problem. The Wikipedia article does not make clear, one important point. It is not JUST that right-handed scissors used in the left hand are both uncomfortable (if they are unsymmetrical due to a contoured grip designed for righties) and that they obscure the sight-line of the cut. These points are both true. But, more important, scissors are actually not functional in the wrong hand because of the cross of the blades. One must learn to PULL with his thumb while PUSHING with his fingers, to adequately use any pair of scissors in the hand it is not designed for.

This is because the natural action would be the opposite, with the base of the thumb mildly PUSHING toward the fulcrum, while the fingers PULL. These pushes and pulls are independent of the up-down motion of the blades, which is the vast majority of the action in the device. They operate transverse to the main blade's travel.


Take a pair of scissors. Open them wide out, and lay them flat on a table in front of you. If they're right-handed, you'll see that the top blade is the one which points to the right. Flip them over. The top one still points to the right. Now go get a pair of left-handed scissors and do the same. The top blade points to the left. Note that flipping the scissors over does not change the topology -- top blade still points the same way, bottom blade still points the other way. It's a common misconception that a leftie's scissor problems could be alleviated simply by flipping the scissors over, except for the contoured grips which would hamper using fingers in the thumb hole. This misconception misunderstands, that flipping over scissors does nothing to rearrange their topology. Top still points right.

For this reason, some primary school teachers mistakenly understand that a lefty could use righty scissors with merely a flip. (It doesn't seem to cross these genius teachers' minds, that if this were the case, then roughly half the righties in the class would get their scissors wrong each time they picked them up!) I have met MANY young teachers who, therefore, have assumed that lefties aren't simply mirror-images of righties, but also mildly discombobulated -- "well, he couldn't work a doorknob because he lacks some of the motor skills of his right-handed peers" or "I'm going to have to help him walk across the street because he's the left-handed one." No no no. Lefties are equally as skilled (or unskilled) in equivalent measure, same luck of the draw, but with a mirror-image version of a righty's skills. Except for with scissors. To hear people talk about it, it's some kind of handicap like Down's syndrome or a missing leg. Geez. It's just a damn DEVICE, these scissors. We can GET a mirror image one if we WANT to.

Just try to cut with the wrong scissors. Put your right-handed scissors in your left hand, try to cut with them, and see that your natural action (pulling with the curled fingers and pushing with the thumb) works at the fulcrum to slightly LEVER THE BLADES APART. They pass one another like ships in the night. They aren't pressed INTO one another, as would happen were the proper hand used. Thus, lefties using right-handed scissors find that the blades leave a gap. You can cross them all the way to "closed" position, but they still won't be close enough to one another to cut mere paper.

Pull with the thumb (the opposite of your normal human tendency) and you can use the wrong scissors. Or just swap hands, like I've done most of my life. Seems to me I'm the MORE adept one, not so dependent on my only dominant side. Hmm. Maybe righties need to watch it around heavy machinery ...

I must be your evil twin. My writing is slightly better with my right [mostly due to years of teachers snatching the implement and sticking it in my right hand], but I kick the soccer ball with my left, used to mess up catching at ball games because I couldn't decide which hand if it was coming right at me, etc.

I was taught to eat and to write with my right hand. I do everything else with my left hand. When I was first taught to use forks and spoons, my elders kept putting the implements in my right hand. I responded by picking up the food in my left hand and shoving it in my mouth. So they held my left hand when I was eating to force me to use my right hand.

At school I was taught to write with my right hand. I always had horrible grades in penmanship. A physical education teacher suggested that my poor handwriting and my even worse coordination may have had their roots in my being switched over from left to right hand at an early age. My mother claimed this was absolutely absurd, as she was a left-hander who wrote with her right hand and had absolutely lovely, legible handwriting. The physical education teacher suggested I try to "regress" to when I learned right-handedness and undo the process by learning to eat and write with my left hand. But I had no support for that from my family and did not attempt it.

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.

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).

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

I'm right handed.

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.

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...

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

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.

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...

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...

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

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!