That's very true - at any rate, regarding ballpoints. I don't think I've ever had a pencil smudge on me, though, except for the very soft kind used in some drawing work. Not the writing kind, though, where HB would be the minimum hardness, I'd have thought.

I'm now trying to recall whether we were taught to slant our letters. I think perhaps it did come up, but (as you can tell from the difficulty I'm having remembering it) I don't believe much emphasis was placed on it.

I'm curious though as to whether right-handers have similar problems with r-to-l scripts such as Hebrew. Any idea?