Curious---Tad left or right handed?

[Angela]

(01-26-2016 01:19 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Angela - I had two childhood friends who were left-handed and you described their formation of words exactly right, either slanted to the left (we called it backhand) or straight up.

When I was ten, I smashed my right shoulder and spent months in a body cast, traction, splints, etc. I had to learn to write with my left hand, and I went from slanting right as a right-hander to leaning left as a left-hander.

Laurie - it has gotten easier since we use pens. The reason is that I, as a left hander, trying to write as a right hander, will lean my whole arm over the page I am writing on and write from "above", this will make the words lean right. As a left handed person I do this whenever I do not have enough room to accommodate my left hand but am forced to work around the limited space on the left side of a place - e.g. the desks that you mentioned...this makes perfect sense.

However, as soon as ink is in the play, this will not work as me dragging my arm behind my writing, it will smudge it. This would have been the effect back in the day and that is why the writing of Tad or your childhood friends would have looked like this.

I agree with Eva - a graphologist would probably be able to tell the difference.
And just to say, while I heard of the practice of forcing children to re-learn how to write, it shocks me to hear that it was done up until so recently. I never had to bother with it, but was told about it.
Since Tad was enrolled in a private school, I believe they would have allowed him to be left handed if he was naturally so. It would be interesting to find some of his work from that time in Frankfurt!
Did Mary not mention in her letters that be brought home things from school?