I’m a righty. My script is dreadful. I print for legibility. I have been asked after people scrutinized my printing please to print. Hey, I did. See? Right there? Wait, I’ll handwrite it for you… Stop! Come back!
In my day (before I discovered small portable computers) I handwrote about a million words of a story on nice artists’ paper (reams and reams of it) using a fine point expensive pen. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Decodable by no one but me. I could write porn and someone leaning over my shoulder would have no idea. My signature has been compared to what you would get if you put a pen in the hand of an epileptic during a seizure.
I think it has less to do with lefty vs righty and more to do with the gender of the person writing. I think I’ve known maybe 5 guys in my whole life whose penmanship could be described with an adjective nicer than “legible”.
For me it depends on the pen. I find the cheaper the pen the better the handwriting. Cheap pens don’t tend to smug as much while I’m writing, and it looks fine.
I did take classes for my handwriting in school though.
"Do all lefties have bad penmanship?" Hey don’t try to lay your heavy cryptofascist mind control techniques on us, Clyde. Keep your Establishment penmanship oppression to yourself. Maybe you should be asking yourself instead, *“why can’t you spell ‘pen-Man-ship’ without including the Man?” * Think about it. Free your mind!
…Oh, you were talking about left-handers! Sorry. This southpaw would like to be able to proudly stand up and denounce your thesis from the rooftops, but alas I personally can’t. I print whenever possible to avoid being mistaken for a pharmacist. On the plus side, I’m told that I have extremely neat and legible printing.
Well yeah, but if you get those scissors with the molded orange handles they’re molded to fit into the right hand. I’m being oppressed!!! On the other hand (ahem) I always liked getting the green left handed scissors in grade school. Way cooler.
I also mouse (and bat, and play guitar) right. I’ve never understood that. It always made sense to me to have your less dominant hand do the mousing (or the strumming as opposed to the fret work). But somehow it’s doing it righty.
But now I’m getting off topic…typical of us right brained types.
I’m a lefty. I took penmanship. It always seemed to be that we just weren’t expected to write well. I think the biggest issue is how we were taught to write. That lefty hook looks painful, I refused to do it. Being that I am rather strong willed, I consistently argued with folks that tried to inflict that on me. I maintained that the best way for a lefty to write was by mirroring a righty, not pretending to be a contortionist. I routinely turn my paper almost completely horizontal to me (with the top of the page being to my right), I tend to write on the back of paper in spiral bound notebooks to keep the spiral out of the way, and hate 3 ring binders/organizers for being unavoidably awkward.
Out of neccessity, I can do many things right handed. I use regular scissors, mouse, etc right handed. However, I am a dealer and I deal left handed. I probably had 4 people last night comment on it. We spread our decks when the table isn’t being played on but is open for players. We fan them out in two rows. Mine are upside down from what a righty does. A manager once told me I had to do it the other way, I said okidoki, spread 'em with your left hand for me once. I’m often baffled at how clueless righties are to our ability to “switch.”
She did not spread them lefty, nor did she ever require me to spread them the other way. Now when people comment on my spread, I tell 'em the Evil One allows it and to take it up with her.
What a tough subject to write about, right, write, righty, lefty. Yeah, I wrote “whitey” once.
My sister is a southpaw and has beautiful penmanship. They tried to make her tilt her paper the same direction as if she were a righty and to hook her hand over. This, we both believe, was the main reason for the back slant a lot of lefties had. She learned to tilt her paper the correct way for herself and not to hook her hand–amazing difference! You wouldn’t look at her writing and automatically think: “That’s a lefty.” It slants forward and is very neat.
She did have to learn to right with her right hand in kindergarten, after she fell from the monkey bars and broke her left arm. She can write better with her right hand than I can with my left! Also, she can write upside down and backwards (at the same time)!
So, no, I don’t think that lefties have naturally bad penmanship. I just think that in some cases they’re taught badly by a right-handed teacher. And in some other cases, they, like a lot of righties I know, just suck at writing!
Both of the lefties you know are males. Are you sure this has nothing to do with it? My ex-wife was a lefty, though, and she had horrible writing. But I have realized that men tend to be a little less legible than women.
I’m a righty, and my penmanship is so awful if I were a teen today I’d be diagnosed with a learning disability. (I’m not exaggerating, I’ve been told this.) When I have to handwrite important notes–rare in the internet age, thank god–I dictate them to a friend. One such friend is a lefty male and has impeccable handwriting.
Actually, I don’t think lefties are taught the “hook;” that’s just how they hold the pen. My understanding (don’t ask me for a cite) is that some lefties are able to watch what is being demonstrated for them and translate how it should be done left-handed; those people can just “mirror” the action and do with their left hand what they see done with the right. Others, who are more strongly oriented “leftie,” can’t make that visual and mental adaptation. They attempt to follow the demonstration exactly, just using their left hand instead. If you see a right-handed person holding a pen to paper, and you try to put your hand in the same postion and hold the pen at the same angle in the same direction, only using your left hand – you have to hook your hand around. When I was learning to write, far from teaching me to hook, my first-grade teacher repeatedly tried to correct the hook, but I simply could not figure out how to push the pen across the page, when every demonstration I ever saw was of pulling the pen across the page from the other direction.
I am deeply left-handed. I can’t watch anything done by a rightie and translate it; I have to figure out how to do it myself. I could probably chew through paper more neatly than I can cut it using right-handed scissors. I have such a bad hook when writing that I “correct” it by turning the paper 90 degrees and writing “up” the page.
My penmanship is poor for a woman, but better than most men’s. Unless I’m writing fast, like taking notes or something. Then it sucks.
I think it depends on how the lefty in question was taught. My penmanship isn’t perfectly copperplate, but I don’t write with my arm hooked around, either. When we started learning cursive, my teacher…well, I always say ‘beat it out of me,’ but that’s not really the case. I can’t remember how she broke me of hooking my left arm around the page, but she did.
I am left handed and one of those people who just naturally mirror what a right handed person does. I don’t do the hook thing, which looks almost painful IMO. I have hideous handwriting but I think my printing is excellent. Well, by excellent I mean it doesn’t look like drunken monkeys did it. I don’t think it has much to do with being left handed though.
I have basically good handwriting, but I write under such incredible tension that I can’t keep it up for long. It’s tiring and cramping, not least because the pen has to be pushed constantly.
I’m mostly left handed, and my printing is barely legible. When I write print right handed, however, my letters could pass for being typed. The reason I don’t use my right hand more often is that I have to think about every stroke of the pen. The only reason I discovered this is from doing crossword puzzles while donating blood.
i’m mostly lefty, although i can write right handed if i want, and my handwriting is horrible. weirdly, when i write in mirror writing my handwriting is much improved, maybe because i’m not worried about smudging. i can write much faster like that too. none of my notes are legible to anyone else, i only write the right way round for exams and forms now.
however, in 3 years i will be a doctor, so maybe i subconciously knew that all my life and was just preparing to be illegible for that.
I’ve never been taught ‘the hook’ and don’t really understand it. My solution was to rotate the page 90 degrees and write from the top to the bottom. No smearing issues and I’m often praised for my penpersonship!
