Crying over Spilt Ink

[steepholm]

I enjoyed Anne Rooney's piece at the Awfully Big Blog Adventure yesterday, on living a 1960s day (a British child's one, anyway). It all sounds very familiar - except for the ink-dip pens.

Our desks still had ink wells, but I never got to use them, to my regret - they looked fun. We had fountain pens instead, rather primitive ones that lived up to their name by leaking from many an unexpected orifice. Being left-handed increased the complication, not only because I had to get special nibs but because of the danger of smudging the wet ink with my following hand. Blotting paper was my friend, but often alas a false one.

For decades I assumed that it was my early ink-smudging experiences that caused me, like many lefties (though far less than some), to assume the characteristic "hook" position for writing, which involves looping one's hand up in a wide evasive manoeuvre and surprising the paper from behind. However, I've noticed that almost all my left-handed students continue to write this way (and one or two righties, too), even though they're unlikely to have been traumatised by fountain pens at an impressionable age. So perhaps there's another explanation?

Now I need a Wellcome Trust grant so that I can travel the world watching left-handed children writing in Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese, and produce a learned report about it all. If only boustrophedon were still in common use I could study that too! (I wonder why it isn't?)

Comments

[lamentables]

My best friend at grammar school was a leftie and one of the few I've noticed who doesn't use the hook position. I've always assumed that it was the mandatory use of fountain pens that produced her non-smearing, non-hooked, rightie-matching style. I, a rightie, was always the one with ink-stained fingers, and an ink-stained school bag. Our desks were equipped with ink wells, but we never got to use them.

Don't people from every period of history think they've live through the fastest changing era, simply because that's the one they've lived through? Not that this thought stops me marvelling at the difference between the 1960s and the present. Some things I miss, some things I wish we could bring back, but boy am I glad I live in the future.

[steepholm]

Yes indeed. As one of Penelope Lively's characters says, "History is ghastly. Nothing but misery and war and brutality. One should be glad it’s over." (That was in 1982.)

[jadelennox]

(Actually not in pain, but I otherwise thought the icon was appropriate.)

Modern pens don't smear as much as even the ballpoints of my childhood, but they do smear. But more to the point, pencils smear like gangbusters, and in the US at least, little kids write with pencils. (Also, since teachers don't know how to teach left-handed kids to write, but they do know that they are supposed to say "your letters need to be angled in this direction," the only way little left-handed kids learn to angle their letters in the way the teachers will like is by hookhanding. I'm not sure if in this day and age teachers care as much about handwriting as they used to, given how irrelevant it is, but certainly for those of us who are adults now.

[steepholm]

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?

[jadelennox]

I'm not sure in Israel per se, but I know I absolutely LOVED the fact that in Hebrew class suddenly my writing was easier than everyone else's, instead of more difficult. But yeah, now I'm really curious -- in fact, I'm even more curious about Arabic, given that some Arabic-writing communities have explicit religious anti-left-handedness strictures. Huh.

[thistleingrey]

Pencils smudge a lot on terrible paper, less so on medium- or high-quality paper, IME. (I'm right-handed for writing but have been looking lately at smudged pencil notes from the 1860s and '70s.)

[thistleingrey]

I suppose that holding the brush suspended neutralizes the r/l issue for Chinese characters in very formal contexts. Some older Korean goes down from the right edge, not across (as also some Japanese and Chinese writing, if I'm not mistaken), but I have always wondered how the writing implement was held for small glyphs written close together down-from-left in codices. [ETA or perhaps I'm wrong and it's down from right in codices, too.] For Koreans, at least through the 1970s there was some attempt to make lefties write righty and hide their putative misfortune.

Add Mongolian script to your grant proposal list?--vertical, left to right, but the vert aspect may or may not have some effect upon ductus.

[steepholm]

Ooh, I didn't know about the Mongolians! Clearly I must include a trip to Ulan Bator on my itinerary.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Har, the Trust should be granted you! Boustrophedon is still used by certain people such as a gymnasium (lycée/high-school in Swedish) schoolpaper mate of mine who could easily write in any direction; up, down, back and forth plus mirror-wise (unfortunately she was also in the habit of doing this with sharp instruments on her arms til she started doing cartoons that she said, stopped the urge somewhat) but I've always wondered about that writing position (hers was straight up). Being a born leftie forced to change to rightfulness, I never wrote that way either way but then, in Sweden we only had pencils and ballpens to write with and my (rightful) parents failed to teach me how to write with a fountain pen so I regret not having the experience. Maybe it's some kind of protectiveness of the written words that makes people sit that way at catching up and hiding what they are doing?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's some kind of protectiveness of the written words that makes people sit that way at catching up and hiding what they are doing?

There's a scene in The Caucasian Chalk Circle in which one of the characters is teaching another one how to eat like a poor man, and he tells him he should put his arm round the bowl protectively, as if afraid of its being snatched from his grasp. This does have something of that look, as if lefties are constantly engaged in confiding secrets to a teenage diary.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Left handed and fountains pens?

Oh aye- know that one all too well! :o)

Remember being hit over the hand with a ruler for daring to be left handed, not that it ever stopped me.

And yes, I hook too!

[helenraven.livejournal.com]

Rather than hooking, I turn the page to an angle that gets the written text out of the way of my hand.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Me too!

I was at school early enough to use a dip pen: those inkwells were always half full of fibrous sludge (blotting paper, possibly), and I was always ink up to the elbow. Mind, that didn't end when I got a fountain pen. That's what your academic gown is for, isn't it, wiping the inl off your hands as you go...

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I think people like to be able to see what they've written, so they can keep track of what they've yet to write.

Also, even biros smudge, though not as much as fountain pens.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good points.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The hook for lefties seems indeed to be natural.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I do know lefties that do it, but neither my father nor my husband (both of whom are left-handers) write like that. They both hold their pens and write exactly the way right-handers do -- except they use their left hands, if you see what I mean. There's no hooking round of the hand at all.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. So much of that was true for us over here in SoCal, except for names of things, and boys in shorts. Boys never wore shorts here, ever, except to play basketball. No fountain pens--those were for rich people. We wrote in pencil, with ballpoint pens for very special papers. They were handed out and then collected again. The special paper (white lined) was also rare--most of our work was done on lined newsprint.

The spouse was born before they stopped trying to force lefties to write right. But he only had a year of it, then they gave up. His leftie hook is so pronounced that he writes sideways up a paper, almost backward.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think my mother (born 1924) was quite lucky in not being forced to write right: it appears to have been extremely common.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. I have a couple of relatives who got the stutter, etc from being forced to right-handedness.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

It's only recently occurred to me to wonder how my father (born 1921) managed to avoid being forced to write right-handed. He either had some very enlightened teachers (unlikely in a state school in a poor working class area) or he managed, somehow, to hide his left-handedness whenever a teacher was looking.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

My mother, approximately same vintage and also left-handed, wasn't forced either, but that was in the US where the dates may have been quite different. Her father was made to use his right hand, but fortunately he was ambidextrous anyway, as I've no doubt mentioned before.