I personally all too well remember the nerve-wrecking moments in lowerschool where cross pen uk were awarded to the children whose handwriting got deemed as good enough to start writing with one. I also remember me and a fellow lefthandy being the last two children to receive one of the Montblanc. Cursive writingI am pretty sure that I am not the only left handed who has experienced this and neither will I be the last one. As it now sounds like a minor thing, back then I was pretty insecure as I was one of the only two children who was left handed in class. Not weird for a seven years old I would say. We at this age would learn to write in cursive. You would get a paper with vertical lines on it, which you would place under the page you were to write on. This way when you started writing, you could line up the letters with the vertical lines. Now writing cursive itself wasn’t really a problem for me, but I can tell you that not one left handed person likes this style as you will smear the ink all over the page while writing. This is because the ink doesn’t have enough time to dry before you roll over it with your left hand, especially when writing with a cross pen. A messy hand and page, combined with a bad grade and a frustrated parent because you messed up your clothes once again, is a good cocktail of hating to write in cursive with a passion. TechniquesI prefer and nowadays write in combination of block and cursive letters with a parkerpen. To minimize smearing out ink on your page, I strongly advise to only write in block letters. I think the most common technique is to just take your time writing when writing with a pen, so that you will give the ink the time to dry. One tip: blowing does not help. As a writer, I write a lot and therefore have used a lot of different techniques to try and minimize smearing. One technique that has really helped me stop smearing, is grabbing a piece of paper, placing it as close as possible to the left side of the point of the pen and moving it along with me while writing. This way, the paper moves over the letters instead of your fingers, which will prevent smearing. ControversionI vaguely remember that the moment we started to learn reading and writing in class, my teacher encouraged me to write with my right hand instead of left. Unneeded to say, apparently that never turned out well. But this is something that a lot of left handed kids have dealt with in their past. Present day, being left handed isn’t a big deal anymore, but not even too long ago being left handed could be seen as something bad and there were a lot of cases where they would be forced to do everything with their right hand. If not? You would get punished. This sadly is a story that I have heard often from people around my age and older. Besides schools punishing their left handed pupils, another thing might be culture. In varying cultures it’s inappropriate to perform certain actions with your left hand, as it is seen as disrespectful. For example, it’s bad manners in multiple African households to shake hands with your left hand, as the left hand is being used to wipe your behind after using the toilet. The same rule counts for Muslims. This is why in those households the parents at times might try to turn their children right handed still. |
