Ok, show of hands...

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What is everyone's dominate hand that they use to write with?

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Right handed

Daniela Wolfe's picture

I'm right-handed.


Have delightfully devious day,

I write with my left hand,

I write with my left hand, but play guitar right-handed, play racket sports right-handed and use a computer mouse right-handed.

I'm an interesting case...

I'm technically and actually an ambi. But I write right just because that's what's taught in schools and therefore it's what was easiest to pick up and become practiced at. I CAN write left, just not very tidy.

There are many things I do better left for whatever reason, though. Eating is a major one. I eat like a lefty. Always have.

Abigail Drew.

Im much the same

I write with my right hand, because I was taught that in school. I'm actually left eyed, which I found out in college so I have been learning new sports with my left hand and doing much better. But for the most part, I go back and forth without any problem.

Eating for me more depends upon which side of the plate the food is on ~s~ left hand for left side, right hand for right. I just have to be careful to hide the second fork because that can get very embarrassing if I forget to swap and just pick up the other one.

Bright Blessings,
Cassie Ellen

right

i do a lot with the left too, but i write with the right.

Write with the right

erin's picture

I do most things right handed but some things left handed and some with either hand. When I was a kid, I did even more things left handed but two different injuries to my left arm put it out of action for weeks at a time and caused me to be more right handed.

I can draw or paint with either hand but my left handed writing is pretty sloppy and my right handed writing isn't pretty to begin with. :)

I can play pool or deal cards with either hand which freaks some people out and got me a reputation in the Army for being a shark. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Show of hands???

I write (pen) with the right hand because in school they would not allow me to use the left.
I write (computer and typewriter) with both hands and pretty much do everything else predominently with my left hand.

Now I only type about twenty five words a minute but when I was twenty-four I tested at one hundred (one fifty if I was allowed spelling errors - couldn't go faster because the typewriter would jam up).

Anesidora

wait... what??

Sadarsa's picture

"in school they would not allow me to use the left"

O.o wow, what sort of Dark Aged school did you attend?

Hi! i attended Intolerance High, for recess we got to play Dunk the Witch. During P.E. we tossed tomatoes in the square, I was an amazing shot, never once did i miss the sorry sap's in the stocks! How nostalgic, reminds me of all the times my family got together for our pay-per-view showings. Ah, i can just hear the sliding blade as the guillotine provided it's nightly entertainments.

oookay, well maybe not *That* barbaric... but you get the idea lol

~Your only Limitation is your Imagination~

In the 70's

It might not have been school policy, but a prejudice teacher.

I went to elementary school in the early 70's. When the teacher was showing how to hold the pencil, she went around checking how everyone was holding them. When she got to me she said I was holding it wrong. She then put it in my right hand and adjusted my fingers. This confused me, because I had been holding it exactly the same only in my left hand. So I transferred it back, adjusted my grip and asked if it was correct. She said no, and moved it back to my right hand. I said , "but that's how I was holding it", and moved it back. She then said "you've got it in the wrong hand" and moved it again. I said "but I'm left handed". She said it didn't matter, you hold your pencil in your right hand. I put the pencil down, and refused to pick it up again. She said I was in trouble, and called my mom in for a conference. My mom, who's also left handed and had trained as a teacher, read her the riot act, citing psychologist that said forcing someone to use the opposite hand caused emotional damage. The principal backed my mom (without needing to be pressured), and said any student could use their left hand if they wanted. The teacher then refused to have anything to do with me when it came to writing, because "If I didn't want to be taught correctly, she wouldn't teach me".

If I hadn't stood up for myself, and refused to be forced. I wouldn't have found out the teacher was violating a (previously unwritten) school rule.

My Mom was ambidextrous...

Andrea Lena's picture

...by necessity. As a kid growing up in the depression era, she faced old wives tales and superstitions as a left hander who was forced to write with her right hand. From English Stack Exchange website:

Historically, the left side, and subsequently left-handedness, was considered negative in many cultures. The Latin word sinistra originally meant "left" but took on meanings of "evil" or "unlucky" by the Classical Latin era, and this double meaning survives in European derivatives of Latin, and in the English word "sinister".

Hard to believe, but in the 1930's, some folks still believed this to be true. My mother got rapped very hard on her left hand with a pointer or ruler. I'm ambidextrous but, unlike my mother, it occurred naturally rather than through punishment. I can actually write left-handed; the results would perhaps qualify me as a physician at least when it would come to writing prescriptions.

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

Writing?

I type equally badly with both hands.

Forgot to add: Writing? It's s-o-o-o last century!


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

Lefty

terrynaut's picture

I write with my left hand.

- Terry

Complicated.

Ok, so as a child I was left handed. I was adopted but not sure if that matters to handedness. So anyway being a young Hispanic child and with some level of prejudice at the time influenced my parents. They forced me to change hands and did not teach me Spanish. The reasoning was I would be just like all the other kids and have no accent. So to this day my voice is pretty neutral, although I do throw a Texas twang in there for tourists. I am still able to do some things with my left which includes shooting. That was an eye opener to instructor in that shooting class in college. I write equally bad with both hands my penmanship looks like a cross between Chinese and doctor script. Cursive smiles, Jenn.


I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair

Which hand

I can write with either hand but i throw right handed.

When i was in kindergarten people who wrote left handed were abused and shamed into writing right handed.

My mom thinks i was just copying her. She is left handed.

Dayna

Left Hand, Right Arm

I eat and write with my left hand, but throw and bowl with my right arm. In the early grades I was strongly encouraged to write with my right hand. It seems that my teachers were not nearly as stubborn as I.

_Bev_

high handed

I am right handed. I don't use a pen much. prefer to type. However I am very ambidextrous when it comes to the use of both of my middle fingers. lol.

I write with my right.

But l use both hands for all else, like tech work. That is a decisionon I made after damaging my right hand in a dummy accident.

With those with open eyes the world reads like a book

celtgirl_0.gif

Lefty all the way!

Writin', drawin', and so forth. About the only exception is guitar and bass, both of which I play in the standard right-handed style.

Melanie E.

Writing? What's that?

Oh, yeah! I remember now. That sort of squiggly stuff which not even I can read.

I use both hands for the computer, and my right index finger for the keyboard on my iPhone.

I actually produce a considerable part of my stories on the iPhone, using DocsToGo combined with Dropbox (which keeps laptop and iPhone in synch). I can use it with privacy and convenience in any public place, as well as at my most prolific time - in bed in the middle of the night - without waking my partner.

Primarily a lefty, but

I throw, bowl, eat and write with my left hand. When in the military, I shot rifles left handed... lots of brass down my collar, but shot pistols right handed. My right hand is stronger and seems more dextrous than my left. When using a tool, like a screwdriver, it's almost always with my right hand although I CAN use both hands with some other tools.

Part of my semi-ambidextrous existence is probably due to the fact that my left eye is 20/20, but my right eye is 20/70, corrected by glasses. As for writing, my Father always used to say that: "He could read writin' when it was writ right, but my writin' was writ rotten." He might have gotten that from Popeye the cartoon sailor... I'm not sure about that one. In point of fact, sometimes even _I_ have a hard time reading what I've written in cursive.

I had a similar experience in school when in handwriting class. I wrote left handed and was constantly put upon by the teacher who insisted that I use my right hand, physically taking the pencil from my left hand and putting it in my right hand. I too was sent to the Principals office... parents called and all that. My Father told the Principal AND the teacher that I was left handed and if they insisted on trying to make me write right handed, he would personally clean their clocks. By the way, that was in the 50's. After my Father's warning, they left (pun intended) me alone to write the way I had to.

So my left hand is dominant... most of the time. Typing? Thanks to the internet and keyboards, I can proudly say that I am up to about 65 mistakes... er, I mean words,...welllll, maybe I was right the first time, per minute.

Let's not forget that the right side of one's brain controls the left side of one's body and the left side controls the right side of one's body, so only left handed people can truly be said to be in their right minds!

Hugs and left handed love,
Catherine Linda MIchel

As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script. Y_0.jpg

Handiness???

Hope Eternal Reigns's picture

I'm dexterous not sinistrous. Interesting how biased our language is. Where anything to do with the left hand is considered bad or evil. I have several VERY good friends who are sinistrous, BUT, anything but sinister.

with love,

Hope

Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.

Sinister!

Tee hee hee!

The only exception is scissors, which I've always used right-handed, so I could theoretically draw and cut at the same time.

Meanwhile...

As the right side of the brain controls
the left side of the body,
then only left-handers are
in their right mind.
:P

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Probably because

Right-handed scissors are designed so that as you squeeze with your right hand it pulls the blades tighter to cut smoother, if you do it left-handed (without forcing your thumb to push instead of the more natural pulling motion) it pulls the blades apart causing it to bend/ crease/ tear/ mangle what you're cutting.

You probably learned to cut right-handed as a child simply because cutting left-handed with right-handed scissors is difficult and tends to damage what you're cutting.

Amphibious...

Schooling had me writing right-handed. When I play badminton, it is with either hand. I change hands in darts depending on which side of the board I am throwing at. I shoot pistols left-handed, but rifles with my right because I trained with a bolt-action weapon that would be a bit painful fired LH. When I boxed, I would change stance from orthodox to southpaw and back as I moved.

Lefty for the most part.

MadTech01's picture

I write left handed.
but Shoot right handed though, so now am right eye dominant (you try learning to shoot lefty on a right handed fifle, if does not work.

ROTC messed up my dominant foot so now I am right foot dominant instead of left (leave it to a military based organization to drill into you how to do something the way it wants you to do it).

So as a psychology has told me I am all out of whack, where I should naturally be doing things with the left side I do things with the right due to forced training and conditioning, and have been told the only way to get back into sink is to condition my self back into what is natural for my body.

I wonder how many lefties go into the military normal and sane and come out all weird.

"Cortana is watching you!"

Right, but...

Right for me, but I suspect that's just because it's what's expected of me. I think I'm probably bi-ambi: ambidextrous and ambivalent. :-) Some things I tend to do with my right, some things I tend to do with my left. Certainly I have a tendency for right for anything involving strength, but that could just be practised muscle development. I can write left handed, but it's ugly - I'm sure due to lack of use/practice than any shortcoming.

It is interesting just how many people are saying they're left-handed. Is that because lefties speak up while righties do a "silent majority" thing? Is it some effect of lefties being more likely to be authors? Or is there some underlying basis to it?

I note that there have been studies of sexual preference v handedness, but studies involving gender expression appear far more limited.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11583249 says:

Handedness preference was assessed in 205 boys with gender identity disorder and 205 clinical control boys referred for other reasons. Boys with gender identity disorder were significantly more likely to be left-handed than the clinical control boys (19.5% vs. 8.3%, respectively). ... Left-handedness appears to be a behavioral marker of an underlying neurobiological process associated with gender identity disorder in boys.