Comment by Someone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone | Hacker News Reader

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Firstly, in many cultures, people were forced to write with the right time up till the 1970s.p (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_peopl...)

Also, when left-handed writing became accepted, there were special left handed pens (with a broader tip that you can push forward without it ‘biting’ into the paper)

Finally, how do you know nobody did that, and got harassed for writing incorrectly?

Left-handedness is somewhat associated with mirror writing (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2117809/:

“Particularly when produced spontaneously, mirror writing is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon: the mirroring may range from as small an item as a single reversed letter, through numerous reversed letters but not words, to thousands of pages of mirrored script; the place in the word in which a mirror letter occurs is variable, and numerals may or may not be reversed too”

> Also, when left-handed writing became accepted, there were special left handed pens

its still a very unnatural action to do when writing, compared to a backslash

> Finally, how do you know nobody did that, and got harassed for writing incorrectly?

The parent asserts that it was invented for computer use, not beforehand. If a left handed person does it, its been invented beforehand

There are some fascinating theories on how writing media affects writing direction and glyph shape. A lot of southeast asian languages have a lot of curves/circles because they'd use a stylus on a banana leaf and the curves are less likely to run a split in the leaf.

It was invented for the teletype. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash:

“What may be the first documented reference to the character is a 1937 maintenance manual from the Teletype Corporation, which includes a photograph showing the keyboard of its Kleinschmidt keyboard perforator WPE-3 using the Wheatstone system. In a 1945 document, Teletype used the name "diagonal key" for the symbol, and gives it a (non-standard) Morse code of ._.._ . Neither document gives its usage”

> If a left handed person does it, its been invented beforehand

I disagree. A left-handed person writing a slash in mirror image doesn’t write a backslash; they write a slash using a different glyph.

My father was a southpaw, but he wrote with his right hand, because when he was in primary school, before WWII, he got his hand beaten many times, to encourage him to write only with the right hand.

Except for writing, for everything else requiring skill he used his left hand.

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