We were advised last year of an unusual golf tournament where you had to be lefthanded to play.  This is what founder John Lidstone had to say about it:

“Yesterday, Monday 23rd July 2012, we held a postponed inaugural Left-handers Open at the North hants Golf Club. This was originally instigated by me 20 years ago when I was the Club’s first and in 107 years, only left-handed captain. It has taken all this time to get the open off the ground. Now North hants Golf Club has, reputedly, at 4 perdcent of the playing membership the largest number of left-handed golfers of any club within the EGU 25.  I presented the firrst winner of the Salver to Julia Taylor, a past lady captain of St George’s Hill GC.”

Here is the Press Release from the club and their picture of winner Julia:

North Hants host inaugural Left Handers Championship

What a unique occasion!   North Hants Golf Club in Fleet hosted their first Open event for Left Handed Golfers on 23^rd July, the day after Ernie Els triumphed at Royal Lytham & St Annes.   It is believed to be the only event of its kind in England and entrants from over 30 clubs participated – there were individual prizes and team prizes with each club being able to enter up to 3 players.  North Hants, currently home of the Hampshire Hog and a past Open qualifying course, was in excellent condition and the event was won by Julia Smith, a 14-handicap member of St George’s Hill Golf Club in Surrey.    Players came from all over the country and, given the success of this first playing, the Left handers Championship is sure to become even more popular in the future.   The team event was won by Maidenhead Golf Club with Royal Wimbledon second.    North Hants has over 20 left-handers in its own ranks and a Trophy was presented to Julia by John Lidstone, the Club’s only left-handed  Captain in its 108 year history.    For information on next years event please contact General Manager Chris Gotla on cgotla@northhantsgolf.co.uk

• Shortcodes WordPress Toolkit Personal edition
  (can be used on multiple personal sites)
• Shortcodes Deluxe WordPress Toolkit Developer License
  (This is what we have, includes original PSD files for graphics and other technical bonuses)

The Shortcodes Toolkit plugin adds a new row of tools to your WordPress toolbar and clicking them brings up all of the options for each tool:

Here is a video by the developer showing the features of the toolkit and how to use them (some of it is a bit “salesy” but we just ignore that and use all the great effects).  For interest, we used another excellent plugin by the same developer called Traffic Player to insert and play this YouTube video in our own style and size.

If you have seen enough already – use this button to order your copy of this great toolkit now.

Here are some examples of what you can do with the Shortcodes Toolkit…

Bulleted lists with nice graphics

• Insert smart tick graphics beside list items
• Big choice of graphics and colours available
• But none left-handed! So we reversed this one ourselves and uploaded it to the plugin folder – Ha!

Nice numbered items as well

• First item.  The numbers are big to create an impact but as with the left-handed tick graphic above you can always reduce them to the size you want and upload.
• We have not found a way to easily add the additional versions of graphics we created to the list of available options so we ended up just overwriting the standard one and then it  shows the new version in the options selection box and on the live site.
• This is a great way to style important content on your site.

Content boxes

Here is another style

Action buttons

This one just goes to the information page on Lauren’s ebook “Your Left-Handed Child” but you can set the target url to whatever you like and have it open in a new window

Signs to get attention for important content

The PSD originals of all the graphics are included with the developer version so you can change them to say whatever you want.  Also, the original .png of the graphic above was 851px wide so we reduced it to 400px which fits our site layout better.

Banners

Testimonial boxes

Just to say how pleased I am with my new bread knife… my son and I can both cut lovely slices now. It is 1st time I’ve used Internet shopping which was very good. The parcel arrived very quickly. Melanie – UK

This one has been linked to our page on left-handed knives.  Original PSDs provide with the developer version so you can make the title say whatever you want, change colours etc.

Headline fonts with style and dropshadow

Choose your style and enter the text you want

Content dividers in lots of styles

Again you can download the original graphics and resize if they are too wide for your site.

Delayed content

This is quite neat – it delayes whatever content you insert by a specified number of seconds after the page loads

This demo also showshow you can “nest” the shortcodes inside each other – this one has a styled hyperlink inside the delay code.  Reload this page to see the delay effect.

Price tables

We have used this to do a price and feature comparison of thre left-handed peelers and directed the link buttons to the product pages.  The standard button graphic said “Sign up” which was not appropriate ro we overwrote it with our own version saying “Find out more”.

Techno Swivel

£4.95

each

Stainless steel blade

Fully left-handed

Plastic handle

Dishwasher safe

Victorinox

£4.25

each

Stainless steel blade

Left-handed angled head

Plastic handle

Dishwasher safe

Ceramic Swivel

£6.75

each

Ceramic blade

Reversed for left hand use

Plastic/rubber handle

Dishwasher safe

Social sharing buttons

We have plenty of these on our pages anyway, but this is a nice way of adding them quickly if you don’t already have some way of doing it.

Get all of these great graphics and functions for your own wordpress blog at a really low price while it is available

Shortcodes WordPress Toolkit Personal edition (can be used on multiple personal sites)

Shortcodes Deluxe WordPress Toolkit Developer License (This is what we have, includes original PSD files for graphics and other technical bonuses)

PS – If you are OK at editing html code, you can always create your graphics using the Toolkit and then grab the source code from the published page and edit it to use the graphics on non-wordpress pages – here is an example I did using the price table from above on an Anything Left Handed product page to do a feature comparison with product images added and links to the related products.

Card rejected on our site because of incorrect data

Our system will check that you have entered a valid card number and expiry date and highlight the entry cell if that is a problem.  The banking system will also validate the card information against your account, checking that the address and postcode you have entered as your billing address match your card account details.

Payment not authorised by YOUR card provider / bank

Our system contacts YOUR card provider to make sure they are going to authorise the payment and if it is rejected, that is out of our control and there is nothing we can do about it from our side.  Possible reasons are:

• Insufficient funds or credit available for the card
• An overseas transaction being blocked by your bank’s rules
  In this case, you can normally phone your card provider and tell them about the transaction with Anything Left Handed and the amount and they will pre-authorise it so that it will then clear OK in our checkout
• The card not being of a type that is accepted by our payment authorisation system (e.g. Amex and Diners – use the Paypal sytem for these, see below; some “virtual” cards and numbers)
• Some other reason your bank wants to check the transaction with you before paying

If the payment is not authorised, we will still get a copy of your order and will follow it up with an email advising you of the issues and what to do about it.

What can you do to complete the payment?

• If the card or address details are incorrect, please go back and amend them and try again
• Try a different card (if you have a VISA or Mastercard they rarely cause problems)
• Use the Paypal payment method – either using your Paypal account if you have one or just entering your card details using the link on their screen (you do not need to have or set up a Paypal account to pay securely by card using their system)
• Email us enquiries [at] anythinglefthanded dot co dot uk (change to e@alh.co.uk format) with your card details and we will try to process it in our direct access terminal (spread the details over three separate emails giving card number, expiry date and 3-digit security code in different emails).
• Email us to let us know the problem and we will try to find a way round it.
• We can accept cheques in Pounds Sterling drawn on a UK bank, Pounds Sterling cash (though we cannot we responsible for any losses in the post) or a bank transfer to our UK account as long as you cover all the costs for both sides of the transaction
• We cannot accept checks in US Dollars or other currencies or checks drawn on banks outside the UK.

Currency issues

“Well done for getting some left handed rulers. However as an
engineer I want a left handed steel ruler 6″ size and 12″ size. The
ones I use at work are like this (235-7487 or 545-070 from
uk.rs-online.com)”

We used to get a steel left handed ruler from a supplier in Korea but unfortunately they stopped making them and we did have some feedback from engineering users that the quality and accuracy of the scale was not good enough for their work.

We are not currently aware of any manufacturer making a left-handed steel ruler but if you do come across one please do let us know and we will contact them.

We do have plastic left-rulers with scales from right to left in both inches and centimetres:

Left handed 12 inch ruler

Left handed 6 inch ruler

You can see from the messages we have included below that, at least for those that contacted us:

1. Their stuttering was directly connected to being forced to change writing hands at a young age
2. It had a dramatic negative effect on them, often lasting their whole lives
3. In some case at least, once they changed back to writing left-handed their stuttering stopped

Now this is only anecdotal evidence but it is pretty clear!

There has been research over the years that has found the percentage of stutterers who are left handed is much higher than the general population but that was not specifically linked to forced hand change (and would depend whether the people who had been changed were still classed as “left-handers” in the research!).

There was also one piece of research as far back as 1940 that actually indicated that lefthanders were LESS likely to be stutterers (but again definitions can cause a problem as the lefthanders who were  forced to change and then stuttered may well have been counted as right-handers!).

We have not been able to find any solid research about this and on the British Stammering Association website it is not mentioned apart from very briefly in a couple of contributed articles, again with no actual research background.  We found an interesting article on the subject here where the author noted:

• About 1% of the human population stutters, more males than females.
• Many studies have both empirically and observationally demonstrated a link between left-handedness and stuttering (the one referenced is “Bryngelson, B., & Clark, T. (1933). Left-handedness and stuttering Journal of Heredity, 24, 387-390″)
• And that as the incidence of left-handers being forced to change in recent years has been reducing, we would expect to see a reduction in the total percentage of stutters, but that does not seem to have happened.

We have since come across a short research review showing how the theory connecting forced hand change and stuttering has become more and less accepted over the years:
Retraining left-handers and the aetiology of stuttering: the rise and fall of an intriguing theory

It is clear that there are many causes of stuttering and it does seem to be at least partly genetic and has been shown to run in families.  Given the high number of people it affects, the proportion of them who have changed handedness as a definite cause is going to be very small, but from what people tell us, it can be a very traumatic and lifelong problem that, in these cases, could have been avoided by just leaving the left-hander to develop naturally!

We would be very interested to hear more of your personal experiences and also find out if there has been any more research conducted into this that we have not been able to find. Please add any thoughts as comments at the bottom of this article.

Related material

•  Our original article “The effect of changing left to right handed“
• Update on changing left-handers to right
• Punished for using left hand

Messages we have received specifically about stuttering

• In the first grade, our teacher wanted us (two leftys) to switch to the right hand, I refused and would not do it, My friend agreed and in a very short time started to stutter, 2 years later, a visiting education PHD from the US, sat in our class, my former lefty friend was asked a question by the guest and his stuttering got worse because of his nervousness, The visitor inquired if he always stuttered and was told that it happened in the first grade, he further asked if the kid used to be left handed and the teacher proudly said that she had “cured” his left handed problem.
  Our guest then told her to make sure to make the boy write with his LEFT HAND
  His stuttering was gone in a few weeks.
• My teacher wanted me to write right handed. She taped my paper to the desk and made me write with my right hand. I began to stutter and my father was on me all the time to stop. I was grounded and humiliated by my father. I finally told him what the teacher was doing with my paper to get me to write right-handed.
  My father went to the school and told the teacher to leave me alone and let me write with the hand I wanted to write with. My stuttering stopped.
• I was born left handed along with my 2 brothers and my sister. They are all still left handed and I was switched in school unlike the others.  I also had to take speech class in school for stuttering.  What are other affects of switching hands?  Molly S
• I think there is a link between switching from left to right hand, and stuttering, but I think that it takes a “trigger” to set off the stuttering. I was naturally left handed, but had it beaten out of me in school (age 4-5 on). All was fairly normal until, age 12, I had 4 teeth extracted under a general anesthetic. The very minute they woke me from the operation I could not talk, and suffered from stuttering for the subsequent 20 years (like many stutterers I now have it under control). I think forcibly switching from left to right hand sets the scene for stuttering – a traumatic event can then set it off.
  Just my opinion, but I have had 30+ years to try to analyze the sequence of events.
• At the earliest signs of being left-handed my mother trained me to be right-handed. I think this may have hindered my verbal and social abilities, as I’ve always been extremely shy and unable to express anger properly – I used to stutter as a child when I was angry.  I’m still not good at expressing myself verbally, thoughts are easier to communicate on paper for me, and my social skills are still lagging behind others.  I excelled in school, math and science, and sports; ventures that require a lot of competition but not communication. I began college with a football scholarship and majored in physics but quit school after two years, probably due to a lack of social skills that caused me to abuse alcohol and other drugs.  I finally cleaned my life up and at age 30 earned my college degree in philosophy with a heavy emphasis on psychology, and then attempted law school, but I still don’t have the social skills necessary for the profession, so I’m working in the telecommunications construction industry, climbing towers, installing lines and antennas for cell phone carriers.  I believe having been switched from my natural left-handedness to being right-handed has had negative side effects, and I highly discourage the practice.
  Joel R
• As the class clown, I was devilish, but those nuns had it in for me and were determined to make me ‘right’… no matter the cost. In this case, of course, it was the horrendous stuttering problem that emerged. No one could figure that one out. Not the expensive therapist, not even me. I just remember beginning to stutter. Now… nothing is worse than a stuttering child, especially if they are Math-oriented and can quickly produce the right answers.So I was greeted with a chorus of laughter every time I stammered or blocked. So finally, I decided to ‘make ‘em laugh’ ….at least I’d be in on the joke, and I developed my weird interpretations and free-flowing, goofy impressions of cartoon characters, which, by the way, most nuns and later teachers were greatly entertained. I didn’t stutter when I mimicked “Goofy” or “Mickey” or, my favorite, “Bullwinkle.” Nevertheless, when I began to give into this burbling to the top of this latent lefthandedness the stuttering began to quieten down. Here I am at sixty and I finally have conquered stuttering and am able to do EVERYTHING left-handed… if I want.
  Ted L
• I write right-handed now but can recall my mother snatching pencils out of my left hand and saying, “No! We write with our RIGHT–see? That rhymes. Use your right hand!”  I remember it feeling weird, but I did as I was told. I’ve suffered anxiety and bouts of clinical depression my whole life and until reading your articles about it never thought it could all go back to being left-converted. Wow. As a child I did not stutter, but as an adult I find speaking very difficult. I can write well and easily express what I want to say in writing….but I search for words when speaking and get all tongue-tied. I’m very introverted and soooo socially awkward. I can see a connection, for myself, between the studied effects and my own conversion to writing right-handed. Definitely.
  Tonya
• I am now in my 70′s but well remember being treated with contempt at school because I was left handed. I was forced to write with my right hand and finished up with a stutter.
  David R
• When I was in infant school and learning to write I was made to write right handedly. I developed a stutter and became distressed by this. When my mother discovered what was happening, she went to the school to complain and insist that I should be allowed to write with my left hand. The school complied with this and my stutter vanished.
  Polly O
• I had never thought about my ‘affliction’ because I was one of the lucky ones who had been changed via a harness, when in the first grades to the acceptable right-handed scholar… this in a religious-oriented school, btw.”
  So……..I then developed a massive stutter that, for all intents and purposes, changed my life forever… specifically my interactions with other students and friends who now viewed me as somewhat defective.
  Of course that was the simple version: The real tragedy related to my entire communicative life — It was very disturbing for me to speak with those necessary in my profession in order to pitch ideas BECAUSE of the stuttering caused by the mechanical change to righthandedness. For almost twenty-five years, I stuttered heavily, so heavily people would turn their heads and look in other directions when I spoke or attempted to speak. More than one job was lost because I just could not effectively communicate the ideas so streaming through my head in a coherent fashion, one understandable to others.
  I was so embarassed by this as a young boy when I attempted to speak to a girl. The first girl I fell in love with who remains the ove of my life (her name was “Gail”), was listening to a joke her mother had made when she answered my call and when I was trying to say ‘Hello’ to her, stammering and hung-up on the “H,” a difficult letter to enunciate, I thought she was laughing at my stuttering, and although she apologized profusely as I continued to attempt speaking, I relived that moment for eons.
  All of this caused by someone determining that I should be a right hander in order to be “Right” for society.
  After I began noticing that my left hand could do some pretty amazing things when I was thirty-nine, I tried to use it and found that my stuttering diminished.
  Scary.
  I now speak well, no stuttering.
  But my life was changed forever by this force-change to an acceptable right handed personage.
• I cant begin to tell you the problems I’ve had being a leftie. Teachers at school persisted in trying to make me write right and caused me to stammer which I still do now.

It is possible to buy guillotines that have the cutting blade at the back and a bar at the front that can be pushed down with either hand (or both), but these tend to be more expensive “professional” models.

There are various paper trimmers that work with a rotary blade and can be used with either hand, but they tend to be for fairly light work.

There are also a variety of rotary cutters that can be used with either hand but they are really more for decorative work and do not perform the function of cutting or trimming several sheets for paper with a straight cut.

You can see a selection of cutting tools suitable for left-handed use in our partner stores using thse links:

  Cutting tools in the ALH UK Partners Shop
  Cutting tools in the ALH USA Partners Store

Please add your thoughts on left handed guillotines as comments below and let us know of any sources for guillotines that work well for you.

We occasionally have left handed dressmaking scissors returned by customers who say “they do not work” but the problem is usually not with the scissors themselves but is being caused by the way they are used. If you have always used right-handed scissors in your left hand (like the Fiskars ones that do not have the blades reversed) you will have got used to twisting the blades to push them together and make them cut. Proper left handed scissors have the blades fully reversed so the left blade is always on top and you can see your cutting line.  When you do the same thing with a true left-handed scissor, you are actually pushing the blades apart and the material will twist between the blades rather than cutting.

You just need to relax your hand, hold the scissors vertically and let the blades do their job without trying to manipulate them. If you are cutting thick material and need a bit more force in the cut, you need to make sure you are squeezing the blades together by pushing your left thumb to your right.

The video below shows Keith cutting thick material with a pair of scissors that were returned as “not usable” and also explaining a bit more about how they work.

We have also heard that people who are having trouble using the scissors (because they are squeezing them wrongly as above) try to get over it by tightening the adjusting screw to force the blades together.  This may work for a short while but is not really a solution as it is making the scissors cut in an unnatural way and the screw will soon loosen itself again as the blades are not supposed to be that tight.  The real answer is to relax the hand and let the left-handed scissors do their work!

Customer comments

• Original email:
  I recently had a pair of left handed dressmaking scissors delivered, unfortunately I have a slight problem with them.  I cut about 6 inches of material and have to stop and tighten the screw.  This is extremely annoying when  cutting large quantities of material.  I would appreciate your advice.
  After seeing this page:
  I have watched your video and it looks like I have been using them incorrectly. That’s what years of using right handed ones does for you.  Regards, Susan F, France
• Original email:
  So sorry to tell you but those nail scissors are nothing like sharp enough  to cut my finger nails, which are normal except they split easily.  I have had to go back to right handed ones which I find difficult to use.
  After seeing this page:
  Thank you so much for your reply the video worked wonders! Many thanks, Elizabeth N, UK

You can see our full range of dressmaking scissors here:

http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/acatalog/dressmaking_scissors.html

and you can see our general video on left-handed scissors and cutting here

http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/acatalog/scissors.html

So sorry to tell you but those nail scissors are nothing like sharp enough  to cut my finger nails, which are normal except they split easily.  I have had to go back to right handed ones which I find difficult to use.

Use this link to see our full article on this and links to more information

Forcing a left-hander to change and use their right hand for writing is a very bad thing to do – please don’t do it!

We ran a campaign on this many years ago to try to get the banks to produce a left-handed version of their cheque books, with the binding on the right.  We did have some success and some of the banks did actually produce left-handed cheque books!  The position has changed over the years so we have just done a bit of research and come up with the following:

• The following UK banks and Building Societies have been reported as having left handed cheque books available if requested (we think only for personal accounts, not business accounts):HSBC
  Barclays
  Royal Bank of Scotland
  Alliance and Leicester
  NatWest
• American banks apparently have “duplicate” cheques with each check backed with a no-carbon counterfoil so you automatically get a copy of the cheque as you write it.   The perforation is along the top so there is not really a “right-handed/left-handed” issue.
• Apparently it is standard in France to have cheque books with perforations along the top as well.

If you know any more about this or know of other institutions that produce left-handed cheque books please add them as comments below.

Here’s an interesting thought I recently had while watching the 2008 version of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’: Keanu Reeves who plays the alien ‘Klaatu’ is left-handed but appears to be right-handed in the movie especially when he’s writing on the chalk board. I know I can write right-handed on a chalk board but not on paper.  I wonder if ‘Klaatu’ being right-handed was intentional or just something Keanu adapted to for the part because of camera angles and things of that nature.

Do actors have difficulty learning stunts with weapons?  Do they sometimes have to use their right hand because of the angles or what the director wants?   There’s many questions about left-handed actors and actresses that I’ve recently thought about.  Jeremy Renner from ‘The Avengers’ is also left-handed but uses both hands in the movie especially in the final fight sequences.

Does anyone else know of instances where left-handed actors or actresses have played a part right-handed, either because the director wanted to make them look like the majority or for other more practical reasons?

And are there any instances of a left-handed real person being played in a film by an actor doing it right-handed?

If you know of any, please add them as comments below.