Writing Right

January 1, 2015

OK, time to make the world a little bit better.

I heard a DJ say yesterday that the only thing she minded about being left-handed was that she used to smear her pencil writing from dragging her hand across the page. I thought, “In this day and age, this is STILL going on??????”

When she was teaching handwriting, my first-grade teacher told right-handed people to tilt the paper to the left; and left-handed people to tilt the paper to the right. It made perfect sense, and none of us ever had to write with our hands curved awkwardly in stereotypical lefty fashion. I thought that all teachers taught handwriting that way.

But as I grew up I was stunned to see other lefties writing upside-down—because their teachers always said when they were teaching handwriting: “Tilt your paper to the left.” No exceptions.

I thought that those kids were the last holdouts of an outdated teaching system. Apparently not.

But now it’s time to stop the nonsense.

Please: Post this, forward it, pass it on, YouTube it, do whatever you need to do—but make sure that teachers teach it right. It’s so easy, and it will save your students SO much frustration. Repeat after me: “If you’re left-handed, tilt your paper to the right.”

And if you ever run into a nun named Sister John Michael, shake her warmly by the hand, and tell her that she is a genius, and that I really, really appreciate her.