Does anybody in here know of any research or articles or anything that have been written regarding how we grip our pencils?
The reason I ask is that I have quite an unorthodox grip, always have, and through my entire childhood I was tormented by teachers for holding my pencil WRONG! Despite their best efforts they never changed me and NOW I've noticed that my 4 year old daughter has adopted the same grip that I have always used… just wanted to learn a little more about it.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Pencil grip...
I think that if it works for you, and you can write legibly, that kind of thing shouldn't matter. I had this horrible teacher in first and second grade who would always get mad at me for writing wrong. I can't remember what it is…I write my letters from bottom to top instead of top to bottom or something silly like that. She actually phoned my parents once because I was writing my 2s wrong. And you know what? I can write completely legibly, and redonculously fast.
This woman also tried to get my friend, who is left-handed, to write with her right hand…just crazy stuff.
I think some teachers have their priorities mixed up.
I don't know. Humans are adaptable creatures and if you can make a certain grip work for you, it will probably do just fine.
In my opinion, it sounds like your teachers were just a bunch of douches.
I remember a teacher who yelled at me for doing writing 7 "wrong". She wanted me to write a line through the middle of it so that it looked like a hybrid of a cross and 7. Apparently she considered that to be the best way to determine the difference between 7 and 1 because she demanded that we also write our 1's with that small line coming out at the top. Man what a dumb bitch. She placed me in one of those special classes and it turned out years later that I didn't belong to those classes at all. My mother had to fight against the decision of that one narrow minded whore for years.
Sorry for the harsh words but it's hard to think positively towards a person like that.
Up until 7th grade I got guff from my teachers for my handwriting….and the way I gripped my pencil. I hold it a bit awkwardly, and can only write for about 2 hours consecutively before my hand goes numb, because I have a vice-like grip…as a result, I have to sharpen my pencils often, because the lead is always breaking. Plus, I'm left-handed…and most lefties get yelled at for it…
I'd say it's just what suits you, and says nothing about your personality or mental development…
Who the hell needs to write for 2 hours not stop at any rate? That's cruel and unusual punishment.
I was at my Daughters Kindergarten for the morning recently and her teaching asked me to set the table, with the handles on the cups all facing the same direction to encourage right handedness… this shit scares me, as a parent
I had the same thing with pens/pencils too. Never changed, but lord, how they tried. They made me put a strange little plastic mold over the pencil which was supposed to make me hold it correctly. All I could recall is my handwriting never improved from it, but made writing VERY painful to do. I despised it and they basically gave it up.
My handwriting is still a bizarre looking mash of stroke lines (my mother recently said my signature was like a doctor's). As for the pen/pencils, I still hold them with the backs facing the opposite direction of myself. Even when I draw, I 'scratch' lines into place rather than simply make them.
The grip I use to write and draw with feels awkward when I do it left handed- like my pencil will fall out of my hand. That's SO irritating to me, since I'm pretty much ambidextrous for most things.
Unfortunately I don't have the patience to train my left hand up to speed for drawing and writing like I have with everything else.
I'm attracted to Women who grip their pencils "backwards". lol! I grip a pencil any one of three ways and usually use the "awkward" grip, bottom to top when using my left hand. I can write from the wrist or the elbow and that effects how I hold the pencil.
When in the army I started using the cross in the seven as I was sick and tired of my seven being mistaken for a one or a four. The whole crossed seven is a wonderful thing. Americans are dissauded from using it in school, but with more and more immigrants we've had to become tolerant in the classroom. I say we bring back the crossed "f" for "s"
As for the cups, that's probably just an odsessive compulsive teacher who wants all the cups facing the same way. Just uniformity. How many people drink their coffee with their other hand while multi-tasking? Those kids are going to have to unlearn that cup holding when they're adults so they can drink their coffee while doing something else.
Hmm, I'm left handed, hold my pencil in a fashion that's considered slightly weird (with the thumb and two first fingers holding the pencil and the last two supporting it from the bottom) and I generally write with my fingers, dragging the hand across the paper as I go on.
I also have dysgraphia, meaning my hand writing is somewhat impossible to read to others (and as a result I can't read their handwriting, as it's different from mine, haha) which unfortunately slightly spills onto drawing. I can't draw in a too controlled fashion (my entire arm starts to hurt and get tired, exactly like with writing) and it also slightly affects my ability to judge distance on paper (I tend to mash words together or make gaps between letters) which means the shapes I draw can be stretched or squished (although I got it under control to some degree and sometimes use it to my advantage when foreshortening).
Well, all of the above resulted in my grades dropping (teachers couldn't read what I wrote at exams), my mom battling with the school, finally, some rich guy sponsoring me an electronic typewriter (thanks to which I'm very fast at typing… and seem to be developing carpal tunnel after 15+ years on keyboards) for a tax deduction… and finally being allowed to write with uppercase letters in school so that teachers can read what I wrote.
We always had at least 1 or 2 more kids that were lefthanded.
None of the "doctors" I was sent to managed to help me with thi plus at that point it wasn't considered an illness so we never got any extra money from that :P
But I did develop certain ways to improve my writing. First, it was quite heavily "stress" related. That is the more I'm stressed, the worse the handwriting. So obviously, when I left school it automatically became better.
Second, the longer I draw, the faster I draw and make more and more shortcuts. To avoid that, I learned to write at different angles (twisting the page up to the 90degrees angle) and with different fonts, sometimes very stylized.
So my notes sometimes look like done by ten different people, haha.
…hmm, kind of like my music was always hopping genres AND my drawing was hopping through various styles. I guess I'm just like that :D
I grip the pencils rather normally, with my thumb and my index and the pencil resting on my middle finger and use the other two to guide it. The only issue I have is pressure. Instead of writing lightly, I usually end up writing harshly and applying a lot of pressure and it usually cramp up my hand quickly and makes for messy front to back writing with letters and such. Greatfully, I can say that it doesn't spill into my drawing–I hold the pencil loosely and draw lightly.
I'm guessing how you grip your pencil is how it's comfortable for you. I've seen some people grip their pencils in some odd ways.
I've been told my grip's weird. I'm right-handed, but my style replicates the stance of my left-handed sister. My hand kind of curls round a little, so the pen points at me slightly. Not sure why, just feels most natural I guess.
My writing's pretty terrible too, but despute all their compaints they can still read it fine anyway… ¬_¬
I had this horrible teacher in first and second grade who would always get mad at me for writing wrong. I can't remember what it is…I write my letters from bottom to top instead of top to bottom or something silly like that. .
Oh I did that too, my teacher didn't get mad, but she didn't like it. And it made me feel unique and special. But now I have stopped doing it with most of my letters.
The way I hold a pencil is the same way I'd hold a needle when knitting. So either I write wrong or I knit wrong. Either way, I get the results I want.
Just before graduation, I had an English teacher who would constantly mark me down for spelling. My Cs and Es looked alike. So did my Os, Us, and Ws. After awhile, she realized that my spelling wasn't horrible and asked me to slow down while writing. That helped. No one has ever complained about my spelling or penmanship since.
The way I hold a pencil is the same way I'd hold a needle when knitting. So either I write wrong or I knit wrong. Either way, I get the results I want.
Just before graduation, I had an English teacher who would constantly mark me down for spelling. My Cs and Es looked alike. So did my Os, Us, and Ws. After awhile, she realized that my spelling wasn't horrible and asked me to slow down while writing. That helped. No one has ever complained about my spelling or penmanship since.
Haha, I do stuff like that when I write too fast. My lowercase Ns and Us look the same. I just have to slow down my writing pace a bit when someone else will be reading what I write.
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