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Lefties are in the minority. Only about 10% of people are left-handed. However just as we have accommodations in place for our students with IEPs to help them be more successful in school, we should have accommodations in place for our left-handed students.
Writing is one area where being a leftie can make it more difficult. Utilizing the tips below for left-handed students will help ease your students’ frustration and make writing easier for them.
Top Tips for Left-Handed Writing
1. Angle the paper.
Handwriting has a slant to it. To get the slant correct, the paper is slightly turned in the direction towards the hand that is not doing the writing. Teach Handwriting suggests angling the paper 30-45 degrees for a left-handed student.
A great way to get students in the habit of angling the paper is to use masking tape to form a triangle on the desk/table where the student is sitting. The left-handed student would place their right paper edge lined up with the left side of the triangle. In the Orton-Gillingham training I attended, the tape triangle was referred to as a “pizza slice.”
2. Choose writing utensils that dry quickly.
When a left-handed student writes, the student will drag their hand across the page. To prevent smudges and getting ink on the student’s hand, it’s best to purchase pens with quick drying ink. Papermate InkJoy Gel pens are my top recommendation! In fact, the Papermate website says these pens dry “3x faster” than their Pilot G2 pens.
When it comes to pencils, it gets more difficult. Typically, #2 pencils are required and those do smudge when a hand is dragged across the paper. A Quora user says a harder graphite pencil will smear less.
3. Sit on the right side of the student.
If you need to sit next to a left-handed student to work with them, it’s best to sit to their right. This way their elbow will not be headed in your direction as the student is writing.
4. Never force a left-handed writer to write with their right hand.
This is a thing of the past. I’ve heard stories from older people about how being left-handed was not an option when they were in school. Their teachers forced them to write with their right hand. Some were even punished when they did not use their right hand (Boeckmann, C. 2026).
According to the Consulting and Information Center for Left-handers and Converted Left-handers, when a left-handed person is forced to write with their right hand “…an over-burdening of the entire brain” occurs and consequences of this may include difficulty concentrating, memory impairment, speech impediments, and more.
When first learning to write, young children may switch hands for a period of time. As children gain fine motor skills, they will begin to exhibit a clear preference for the right or the left hand. Here’s a great article explaining this in more detail, “When Does Handedness Develop in Children?” from whattoexpect.com.
Conclusion
While these tips are simple enough, sometimes our left-handed students get overlooked. In the past, I have been guilty of it myself. So, thank you for supporting your left-handed students! They will find writing tasks a little bit easier and, hopefully, be more successful with them.
And make sure you have some other left-handed supplies handy as well, such as left-handed scissors and left-handed pencil grips.