As a child I solved this problem by rotating my paper 90° to the right and writing “down”. Still do it til this day.

Although it gets awkward when someone wants to hold the paper for me while I sign. I have to gently tug it away from them so I can turn it.

I struggled with this through highschool. Pencil and gel pens were the worst. I never learned to write with my paper tilted like some lefties. I write just like a mirror image of a right hander, which lead to a lot of smudging and having to rewrite papers etc

This change my sophomore year in English class when my teacher told me a trick! Place a sticky note on the side of your hand that rests on the paper. No more smudging!

This was one of the reasons kids werent allowed to be left handed in the old days - you used fountain pens so it would smudge the ink

I'm right handed; when I experimented with writing with my left hand, I discovered that it's much easier to write "in mirror", right to left, using mirrored cursive characters. (also slanted in mirror)

Solves the problem with the hand overlapping the fresh writing and produces some funky-looking text.

I'm also left handed and this was never an issue for me. You hold the pencil out from your fingers thus your hand is sitting slightly below the line that is being written, traveling over unused paper constantly.

Only people that do that weird claw thing have that problem.

That's the reason I write my signature from right to left, starting from the last letter.

It's weirdly left slanted but actually better than my normal handwriting.

If I had to do it again, I would have learned to write with my right hand due to occlusion. It gets worse if you try to learn how to write in Chinese (at least in modern orientations). I think the reason I became a programmer is just because keyboards were so liberating for me.

You should learn Arabic, then you can write in the other direction and watch the right-handed normies struggle with this :)

Just imagine what it's like to spend three years doing technical drawing in high school using Rotring pens [1], not to mention practicing calligraphy based on IRAM/ISO standards [2][3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotring

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instituto_Argentino_de_Normali...

[3] https://youtu.be/znrD1DjYqrE?si=Z7RsTatVCw3OKTdT&t=169

I've often wonder why this isn't a big problem for right-to-left languages.

Always have blue ink on the side of my hand where I have dragged my hand across the page and through my writing. Fountain pens were particularly messy.

Fountain pens are fun too in the places that did those

> Also ring binders were a pain in the ass.

My suggestion would be to just turn them around so the spiral is on the right side

You should learn Arabic: problem solved.

I used to have the same problem. Switching from pencils and pens to keyboards fixed it for me. :)

You should solve this problem by simply writing every page backwards from end to beginning.

Im also like that..randomly mixed. I write left, but use scissors always with right. Throw and kick are right, but swing and bat is left. Computer mouse left. Taking a phone call is always left hand on left ear...but holding phone to use or text is always right hand. Self check out? Back to left hand for that mostly Lol. If a backpack is on one shoulder it feels weird if it's not on my left shoulder despite being more right "armed".

This is me exactly. I always say "strength in my right, finesse in my left" even though it's not exactly accurate; I couldn't hit the ground with a football from my left hand.

I guess it's possible to be non dominant in either hand. I write left and eat with a fork or spoon in the left, but I bat, bowl, or throw with the right. In the boxing gym, I'm not a southpaw. But I play lefty guitar.

I am exactly like this. When I was learning to write I frequently changed hands, until my teacher told me, that I have 3 days to figure out with which hand I want to write. Left felt slightly better to me, but by that time I was eating like my completely right-handed family and using scissors with the right. I also play guitar as a right-handed would. I tried a left-handed bass for a bit and it was super awkward. It also means strumming is much harder for me than changing notes on the guitar. I struggled so hard with clawfinger banjo playing, that I gave it up.

All later skills, like shooting a bow, I do as a right-handed, since I am right-eyed. This is hard to do, since my left arm is much stronger than my right and you need more strength in the string-pulling arm.

I feel wrong and awkward a lot. Writing on a keyboard is very liberating. But when I was playing first person shooters in my teenage years, my aim (right-hand mouse) was always bad, while my footwork (left-hand WASD) was very good :D

Me too. It's called mixed-handedness.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dominance

> I'm right eye dominant, though, so I throw, swing, shoot, use scissors, play instruments and use a mouse right handed.

Dominant eye and hand don't have to match; in fact, they often don't. To quote Wikipedia:

> ...the side of the dominant eye and the dominant hand do not always match. This is because both hemispheres control both eyes, but each one takes charge of a different half of the field of vision, and therefore a different half of both retinas

Left:

Write, eat, brush teeth, scissors, chop vegetables, etc. Basically fine motor skills on the left.

Right:

Throw a baseball, shoot a basketball, play tennis, etc. Power movements on the right.

Could always do some sports lefty, like switch hit in baseball, kick a football (soccer) past half field, or play pool, those kinds of things, but right side has always been stronger.

The only sport where I am much better lefty than righty is table tennis -- probably because to play at higher levels you need fine motor skills, not just brute force.

Anything I didn't have to be taught to do, I do with my left hand or the left handed way. Opening bottles etc. But I write and play sports/musical instruments with my right hand.

With a bit of practise I can write neatly with my left but it's a bit slower. I started using a computer mouse with my left hand so that I could put a notepad just to the right of the keyboard and not compete for space with the mouse.

I write with my left hand, play guitar with my right, and use the mouse with my right. Same as you though, I'm not ambidextrous

I'm exactly the same on all those (and add kicking to the right-sided list). Cross-dominant [1] is the usual term I use for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dominance

There’s a term for this: cross dominant. I have the same condition, the research is all over the place about whether it’s a good or bad thing. It generally means the brain hasn’t fully picked a side, so some operations have to cross the corpus callosum which can add latency.

I'm the same - I call it "pseudoambidextrous".

I lived in Europe for 10 years and that was nice as far as eating goes. Here in the USA I always try to grab a left corner so I'm not bumping elbows with anyone.

I had an uncle just like us, my son is a true full on lefty.

Metoo kind of... Write right-handed, fork on the right, but knife on the left. Throw with the left hand, kick with the left. Mouse on the right. Also wished the gas pedal was on the left :D

I do basically everything with my left — but I do use the mouse with my right. Not sure what that means…

Same. Small motor lefty, large motor righty

> But some right-handers who have been forced to (by breaking an arm for example) can learn to write with the left hand.

I'm right handed and taught myself to write left handed out of boredom. In college I would just start taking notes with my left hand in classes where they prof conveyed information slowly enough that I had the time to do it. It was a good way to stay engaged and awake.

As a consequence I can still today, 25 years later, write with both hands (although to be fair, my handwriting is terrible with both hands so that could be why it's hard to tell the difference).

About feet...

I was forced to write right-handed at primary school. I can't write with left, but I'm ambidextrous. At work, I've got my mouse to the left, at home to the right. There's an 'inventory' if you want to check, the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory: https://brainmapping.org/shared/Edinburgh.php

Anyway, back on topic. I play musical keyboards, so that definitely helps being ambidextrous. But I also play classical organ, and my feet have no preference. Left is just as agile (or clumsy) as right. But that's not different for right-handed organists. So at least in that case, there doesn't seem to be a connection between handedness and feetedness.

This is of course just some observations, but it is rather obvious that we do use our legs/feet a lot, and almost always in a symmetrical fashion. And for turning corners while running and such, we need to be able to rely on strength and agility in both.

I am a lefty for small motor skills (like writing and eating) and a righty for large motor skills (like throwing a ball or swinging a bat)

I'm the same, just mirrored.. I'm technically right-handed, but my left hand works as well as the right one for stuff that I haven't exclusively trained my right hand to do (or the left one, for that matter, as far as the right hand is concerned). So I can't write with my left hand (except that I can mirror-write, especially if I write with my right hand at the same time. Apparently Leonardo Da Vinci used his left hand when he mirror-wrote, and his right hand when he didn't. Read that somewhere).

> I'm also somewhat left-footed because I tend to carry heavy things in my right arm; so my right leg is busy supporting the extra weight as I step up on a step with the left.

As a skateboarder that regularly teach the basic ropes of skateboarding I noticed that footedness (giving you stance) has little to no relationship with handedness.

I feel I can imagine myself sliding both ways. Actually doing it would more than likely reveal my preference though.

But when I try to imagine myself standing on a skateboard, it gets clear immediately: left foot forward. Right foot forward feels completely wrong.

An easier snowboard test is to tell someone to turn around and tell them you are going to give them a push. Give them a shove to the upper back and see which foot they put forward first to brace.

Right handed, but I pictured my left foot forward. I guess because I'd expect the power to come from my right foot (I'm right footed).

I brush my teeth and write with the left, dribble and throw with the right.

I kick the ball with the right, and on the boards sports I'm goofy.

Right handed with right-foot-forward as well.

Huh, weird.

I tend to default to right foot forward for most things. Sport fencing did it, maybe…

On ice skates I (left handed and left footed) find it easier to come to a prompt stop with the left foot forward, and I naturally slide across ice and such with my left foot forward so, naturally, I thought I'd have the left foot forward while snowboarding.

Everything felt absolutely right, UNTIL I gained some real speed for the first time. Nope! Suddenly everything felt wrong, and I instinctively turned so I had my right foot forward.

So weirdly goofy it is.

I had a short lived job at Taco bell as a teenager, and at Taco Bell there is a 2 sided table for assembling the food. Newbies start on the right side, experienced on the left.

The left side prioritized the drive thru, so it was more speed oriented than the right side, which prioritized the dine-in.

I had a really difficult time on the right side, being left handed. All of the assembly steps were backwards for me. The left side would have been a better fit for me.

I tried to explain this to my boss, but she made it evident to me that she wasn't being paid to care.

It was a stupid minimum wage job and I only made it 3 weeks, which was my second or third shortest lived job.

As far as "accommodations" go, I was especially equipped to work faster in their higher priority lane, but since I didn't fit into their box, it just wasn't meant to be.

To me it feels like whichever hand I start with lol, it does make me wonder if the reason I'm much better at fps games with a controller is because my left is my precision hand but I'm using the mouse with my right. (I know controllers have aa but I'm still much better than a mouse even though I've been using mouse to play rts and moba games my whole life over using a controller for just apex)

This has to take the cake for "most spurious correlation." The most coherent reading is "places which report more homocide data are correlated with reporting more left-handedness"

It could also be that when fighting (pre guns) people with left handed weapons took normal right handers off guard (sort of like how in baseball a leftie might throw off other players). I can imagine in a sword battle if you are used to fighting people right handing swords that suddenly fighting a left handed person could be unexpected and disadvantage you.

Where I am going with this is that it might not be that left handedness directly correlates with violence in any way - but perhaps societies with more left handed people were simply more likely to survive in more war like times.

Interesting that the scale is logarithmic on the homicides number axis.

I wonder if this is where the whole left handedness being associated with the hand of the devil (or any evil) came from historically. Our ancestors probably weren't doing studies like this but like many religious/spiritual restrictions that seem like they are backed by "nothing" at first turn out to have a fair application to life behind them it's probably not too much of a stretch that someone at some point or other noticed something like hey, that village/tribe/whatever near us has a LOT of left handers and they have an awfully suspicious amount of violent incidents happening.

Wow, this really blew my mind.

Imagine a society of red-headed left-handers.

The findings in chimpanzees indicate that both humans and chimpanzees exhibit population-level asymmetries in handedness, though humans show more pronounced lateralization (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3676728). I think this suggests that anatomical asymmetries in the brain likely preceded handedness and contributed to the evolution of hemispheric specialization. As brain size increased and corpus callosum connectivity decreased, specialized functions in each hemisphere became more pronounced. Thus, handedness and brain asymmetry likely co-evolved, influenced by both genetic and environmental (including socio-cultural) factors, rather than one directly causing the other.

With so many poisonous plants reptiles and insects, it is better to use the hand further away from the heart. In case it gets stinged or bitten or pricked the poison will affect a slightly more remote area.

Let's work it out: 1 in 10 are lefty, 1 in 1000 have Downs. Supposedly 50% of people with Downs are lefty, therefore:

P(A) = 0.001

P(B|A) = 0.5

P(B) = 0.1

P(A|B) = P(B|A)xP(A)/P(B) = 0.5x0.001/0.1 = 0.005 = 0.50%

So the chances of having Downs given being a lefty is 1 in 200, or which is 5 times higher than the base rate, but still quite rare. It's probably more a case of "having developmental abnormalities interferes with handedness" rather than "being a lefty predisposes you to having sundry developmental abnormalities".

People who have them are more likely to have other disturbances. One of the few things I recall clearly from embryology in med school is that any disturbance of the midline and sided structures of the body often reflects some abnormal development: there's rarely only one (e.g., if their brain is abnormal, you had better look for cardiac abnormalities).

Left-handedness is unusual, but not per se pathologic. There is a running joke among neurologists that the average neurologist is a left-handed person with migraines. They aren't all, of course, but if you had chronic headaches and were left-handed, wouldn't that predispose you to pursuing a specialty where you try to figure out what's going on in brains? I majored in chemistry; it's not a huge stretch to imagine why I became an anesthesiologist. It's interesting, and it makes some intuitive sense. We tend to be more of the "analyst" personality; former engineers and accountants are not rare in anesthesia.

Or there are simply a lot of people who might be left handed by default but then adapt and learn to be right handed. People with rare conditions like the above might either have more trouble adapting or perhaps socially we put them more in special ed programs where they are observed more closely and stick with their default.

It might just mean that people with certain disorders have much bigger immediate problems in hand-movement to overcome, so that there's no extra capacity/opportunity to engage in mimicking the right-handedness of people around them.

Down syndrome (trisomy 21) and cerebral palsy are something you're born with no? Epilepsy too maybe? (even if it only declares later on in life?)

So how is this not inversing cause and effect:

> Or are left-handed people way, way more likely to suffer from these rare diseases?

There are a lot of myths and anecdata about lefties having shorter life expectancy. That might indicate health consequences in some way.

For me, eating and writing are the few things I'm only good at doing left handed. Knives are left handed as well. Scissor use is always right handed since most scissors are right handed, using left hand scissors is hard for me. Sports are always right handed for me. Tools are usually ambidextrous. My left hand is more dexterous but my right is stronger so my dominant hand just depends on what I'm doing with the tool. Using an xacto blade to carefully scrape solder mask off a board? Left hand. Turning a difficult screw? Right hand.

I think the defining thing for me is that if something is specifically made for right handed use or if you're more likely to encounter a right-hand version, I'm probably right handed when using/doing it. If it's ambidextrous like a pen or fork, I'm usually left handed.

What is a PHB? I searched online, and found that it could mean bachelor's in philosophy (PhB) or polyhydroxybutyrate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhydroxybutyrate), but neither makes much sense in this context.

The root meaning of the word sinister is left-handed

Mine didn't...

Yep me too, I'm sure there are many things we've subconsciously adapted to using with our right hands. Actually I've never bought a product purpose made for left-handed people.

I'm guessing your school or home computer had it on the right growing up? I got used to using it on the right because I didn't want to move the mouse to the left in the school computer labs as it was always a clutter of cords. At home half my family was left handed and mainly the PC was used by the lefties so I got used to playing FPSs with the left hand. I kinda hate playing on PC now because WASD is trash left hand mousing and it's A HUGE PITA to remap every single key to make sense on the the other side of the keyboard, some games don't even let you map keys like ';' because IDK, fuck me I guess.

I do think I'm more accurate with my left too.

This is completely wrong btw.

No power ever comes from the right.

That is why there are warm up exercises using katate (single left hand warm up) to loosen and focus on your left.

It makes no sense for power to come from the right as fumikomi (the leaping motion at the time of the strike) is done using your left hips and legs.

Doesn't left-handedness give an advantage in most sword fighting and fencing sports? As demonstrated by the percentage of left-handed players at the top level is higher than the population average? I heard the same thing is true with boxing, presumably other martial arts, and tennis (and who knows what else).

The explanation I've heard is that in any sport, on average one would train more with right-handed opponents. So when facing a left-handed opponent you are significantly less experienced, which results in left-handedness having a slight advantage.

That is a bit different than what you describe (since you're not allowed to use your katana in a left-handed fashion), but still.

> left-handers [..] feel disadvantaged in our right-handed society

> You have to wield your sword like everybody else

This right here is why.

No, clear "handedness" is seen in a lot of animals not just primates. You can see it easily in pets: cats tend to reach with a certain paw, dogs tend to dig with a certain rear leg over the other. Horses lead with a preferred side when possible. Similar things are observed in non-domesticated animals like wild birds and whales also. Lateral preference isn't a universal animal behavior but it's very common.

But that wouldn't explain why most people are right handed, would it?

My father did it when he was a child so he could "be like his brother" who was 1.5 year older and the favorite son of his mother (this brother was the first male son after a female who was the first overall).

He is now right handed for almost everything but really skilled with the left hand, I remember that once he broke the right wrist and could easily write with the left hand for example.

I have an older sibling who is left Andes and challenged me to use my left hand since they could use both. So I’m at about a typical left handed person’s level of dexterity with their right hand. I switch off on tasks like shoveling or sweeping. I can write badly. Etc. I wouldn’t say it is useful, really.

Rafael Nadal, one of the best tennis players in history, supposedly is a natural righty who was taught to play lefty.

I mean, I'm here typing with my left hand.

A right-handed friend of mine was forced, as a result of spinal damage, to make use of his left hand. He always used to say "I was was right-handed, but now I am ambisinistral... equally useless with both hands"

Similar story for my wife, though it was an underfunded Catholic school with only right-handed sports equipment that pushed her to be ambidextrous. She's split pretty much 50:50 on which hand she does something with, though I've noticed she does actually seem to pick her left hand when its a totally new skill she hasn't done before.

My right hand is all but useless, I'm very left handed. Golf is the only exception, but I'm terrible in either direction and right handed clubs are easier to rent or buy.

My father was left handed.

While in school, before WWII, he was beaten on the offending hand, to discourage him from writing with the left hand. So eventually he became accustomed to write with the right hand, and then he has continued to write with the right hand, even if he always did most other kinds of precision work with his left hand.

I was originally ambidextrous, but my mother taught me to be left handed because that seemed more interesting to her. I'm mostly left handed these days, though I bat either way, use my mouse either way, and shoot guns right handed (I forced myself to learn to shoot right, so semi-auto casings are ejected away from me instead of toward me).

I'm similar, but no parent or teacher forced me to be so. I do write with my left hand, but so many other things are just easier right-handed that I do both (sometimes switching between them during the same task). Pretty sure my right hand is faster and my left hand is more precise.

I'm right handed for everything in life, except chopping wood. It's the one thing my leftie Dad taught me that stuck.

I had no idea until recently when someone said "Hey, you're doing that left handed"

My dad was left handed, I'm left handed and my daughter is left handed. It certainly helps in troubleshooting things, because when anyone else uses a pair of scissors, they work. When a left handed person uses a pair of scissors, they don't work, so you have to figure out how scissors work, or just use your right hand. Imagine doing that with everything.

I did pick up some ambidextrous habits. My daughter and I mouse with my right hand but my dad left handed a mouse.

Unless you really can switch hands at the drop of a hat (which is incredibly rare), the term is cross-dominant or mixed-handed. I prefer my right hand for fine motor skills and left for gross. I have a coworker is who is almost exactly the opposite.

I’m ambidextrous as well, but always was I guess. Most things feel more natural to do with one hand or the other, and I just do that. I never felt like ambidextrous was accurate, so I say weird-handed.

The reason I write right-handed is that my friend kept “correcting” me when we were learning. I still hold the pencil like a lefty, though, which gets funny looks.

I always use left hand for everything that does not requires right hand. The only activities I need to use right hand is when I use a desktop computer or writing. I was tried to use right hand for the other activities but it is never comfortable no matter how much I practice.

So what makes that left-handed? Is there nothing on the right side?

Often times chirality is not just a fun quirk. For certain drugs, the left handed and the right handed versions can have completely different effects on the human body: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_drugs#Drug_toxicity. To avoid making the wrong type of drug, a specific way of producing the chemical molecule has to be derived: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantioselective_synthesis.

Basically all people with ancestry outside Subsaharan Africa have nontrivial Neanderthal admixture. Even many Africans do, although it is a fresh (post-1600 or so) contribution from other parts of the world. So they were "our" ancestors, just not the dominant ones.

That statement would only be categorically wrong if made about pureblood Khoisan etc.

I lose a little faith when I see people nitpick while being wrong.

I remember an article in Nature that’s better than this one. Stats:

Men are 13%, women 9% Being a twin is very high, like 17% Scandinavia is 13%, China <3%

My grandmother was hit with a ruler on the left hand. She learnt to write with both hands as a result.

Very standard in Ireland where I went to primary school, I got hit with a ruler a lot.

Right wing is just the side of the room some guys sat on during some arguments in the French Revolution, or something like that, right?

I always assumed “rights” as in human rights were derived from writ, as in a type of written document issued by a court (which could be used to clarify somebody’s rights). I guess write and right could be related though.

I'm not sure why people have started to make reversed musical instruments. I saw a video with a reversed piano, calling it "left-handed." I am a left-handed person who plays the piano and I had always thought the keyboard was laid out like an ascending scale on paper rather than having something to do with handedness - low notes on the left and high notes on the right.

The motions involved in playing music are so weird that I don't think it matters that much. Even if it does, there might be techniques that you find easier to master with one handedness or the other.

I will also add that I have been complemented on the facility of my left hand when playing, but when I hear the people who say that play scales, it's very clear that they don't practice technique with both hands equally.

One interesting data point is the majority of hockey players shoot left but are not left handed.

https://www.purehockey.com/c/why-are-so-many-hockey-players-...

Yeah my body is all kinds of confused also:

  - Write with my left
  - Cricket/golf right
  - Tennis/squash left
  - Bowl/throw left
  - Mouse right
  - Drink left
  - Eat right (fork in left hand, knife in right)
  - Cut left (but usually don't bother because scissors never work)
  - I also kick well off both feet (although favor the left foot slightly)

I'm one of those lefties who have been forced to write using my right hand too.

It cost me grades throughout my whole time at school and university. This is why I write with my right hand. It's ugly, but most of the time I can read it. Luckily, we have devices today which make handwriting not so necessary anymore.

It was a blessing when I learned spreading butter on bread with my left hand...in my late 20s. Those many times I just ripped through the bread. Also forced upon me on some church vacation where me doing it with my left hand was just uncomfortable for my table neighbor and why I had to stop it according to the adult watching us.

Yeah...it is more than "a bit annoying" in this right-handed world sometimes.

Get those lefty scissors. They are such a blessing!

My lefty friends use RH golf clubs

Smart phones confuse this, I think. I bet most right-handers hold their phone in their left hand so they can touch the screen with their right. So it then naturally follows that, to hold the phone to the ear, we'd keep it in that left hand. Of course, sometimes I also use it one-handed, in which case it's in my right hand — on reflection, I think most phone use is probably ambidextrous.

This is the one thing that seemed off. I don't have any preference for one ear over the other. If I hold the phone up to an ear, it would depend on what I wanted to do with the other hand. If I'm writing, I would hold the phone in my left hand to my left ear. If I'm typing one-handed, I would type with my left hand while i hold the phone in my right hand to my right ear.

If I went to listen up against a door, it would depend on other things which ear I used, like which ear might already be closer to the door.

I hold the phone to my left ear, but that has nothing to do with ear preference. It's because it feels more natural holding it up with my left hand (which conveniently leaves my dominant right hand free for doing other things).

I'm right-handed and hold my phone to my left ear. Actually I tried holding it to my right ear a couple of times and it felt so unnatural that I had trouble focusing on the conversation. I have no idea why this is.

i'm left handed but i tend to hold phones to my right ear.

From the article, "when you compare the number of left- and right-handed Neanderthals, this same ratio of 1 in 10 left-handers that we see today pops out"

Nice, except the liver is on the right hand side.

A fun history fact:

> The stair spirals counter-clockwise and is known as the "left-handed staircase" as it would put right-handed attackers at a disadvantage. The story is that in 1513 when the left-handed Sir Andrew Kerr came back from the Battle of Flodden, he had his men learn to use their left hands when swordfighting. In Scotland, left-handedness has been dubbed "Corrie-fisted" or "Kerr-handed".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferniehirst_Castle

You are using "survivorship bias" incorrectly: if it doesn't lead someone to an incorrect conclusion, then it is not survivorship bias.

What you describe is a selection pressure for right-handedness.