I'm a leftie and I think my 1st grade teacher was a leftie too, so she favored leftie. But technically I'm ambidextrous. Well, I can write in cursive with my left, and print with my write. Ambidextrous peopl eare actually more clumsy because they may switch hands for example. I can catch with both and throw with both, but i prefer my right hand for those things. I'm a righty for most things except writing, which is odd, no?

Not really. I know a lot of people who use different hands for different things. I had never had a concrete example of why, but a guy I know recently said that he plays tennis, badminton and table-tennis left-handed and everything else right-handed. And he reckons that it's because he broke his hand around the time he would have started playing, so his left hand was stronger at the time.

What he said. If the problem is smudging the ink/carbon, then just hold it from the bottom, problem solved. I never understand these arguments on which direction of an alphabet is better...

I do this! I write and eat with my right hand, but in every sport I've played I hit, catch, what have you, with my left hand.

As far as RTL vs LTR scripts, I've noticed that when I write Hebrew or Arabic, I tend to drag my hand across the text, so I end up with ink all over the side of my palm. I imagine that many left handed people do this with LTR scripts.

Oh, and I hate vertical Japanese. It's evil.

I tend to hold my pen awkwardly when writing Hebrew. But it's not like I do this too often

Just hold it from below!!!

Or above like I do.

Vertical Japanese IMO is a lot easier to read than horizontal. The eye just seems to naturally track that way. And the characters are no problem for lefties -- I used to have Japanese friends ask me to address letters for them, because they thought my calligraphy was more presentable than theirs. And that's from picking up Japanese as a (young) adult, without having years of practice. People can't tell I'm a lefty in Japanese unless they see me write. And when writing horizontally there's even less ink smudging than with Arabic, which (at least in its Persian variant) isn't as lefty-friendly as it might at first seem. I think the conflict between RTL and being right handed might be the reason for that beautiful nasta'liq style, with its short / / / / diagonal lines rather than a simple horizontal direction of writing.

That's exactly why I thought Arabic wouldn't be lefty-friendly. (Though I don't know Arabic so I can't be sure.)

And I'm kinda curious. Could you scan some of your Japanese calligraphy? When you write do you use the "correct" strokes that are widely accepted or do you have your own lefty strokes?

Also, I agree that vertical Japanese is better. As well as reading, writing is also easier vertically, as I find hiragana especially have forms that just are easier to write vertically. (Only problem is the dakuten. Were they introduced after Japan started writing horizontally? And of course the smudging. One day I want to get a fudepen/fountain pen/something that I can write with without resting my palm and write vertical Japanese. That ought to fell good.)

Most of what I have lying around are addresses, which I wouldn't want to put online. I'm really rather rusty for writing anything new. I never got too far with actual calligraphy: most characters I only know to print, which is what you'd want to address a letter anyway. But no, no lefty strokes. With a brush there isn't any dragging or pushing in the wrong direction, but even with a pen I don't find it hard to write 'correctly'. I think what I do is to hold the pen vertically, a bit like you would a brush, so I'm not dragging or pushing it at an angle like I do when I write English, even though I let my hand rest on the paper. I think I just prop my wrist up on the paper so that I'm holding the pen at a greater height than in English.


Yes, dakuten came in later. Handakuten is even worse, since a brush can't handle a circle very well. That was a Portuguese influence. Even today, people will often leave out dakuten when writing calligraphy. The reason I've always heard is that they're "ugly".

BTW, I've always been told that my hiragana are "childish". It's only the kanji that I can write well, and the more complex the better. The most difficult for me are hito 'one', onna 'woman', and ko 'child'. Getting those balanced is a real feat. But something with lots of strokes like the old form of tatsu 'dragon' is simplicity itself, because there's no place to put the strokes except in their proper positions. I think that's one reason I like the old forms of the characters, which seems to unduly impress people.