How do you hold a pen/pencil?

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I also got a big calous on my finger from doing this.. hahah

wow- a five-year bump
i am a lefty who holds his writing instrument with the top pointed away from my torso. roughly 10% of lefties write this way. the university of washington did a study several decades back, and found that the minority 10% of outward-pointing lefties lived, on average, 10 fewer years and in statistically signifigant numbers, to die in fatal accidents. i read later that, neuologically-speaking, i am a right-hander, and in fact ambidexterity runs in my family tree- i can do most things equally well with either hand, 'cept for writing and teeth-brushing. still later i read that it is a serious defect in the corpus callosum which causes the accident-prone-ness in the terrible ten-percenters. now i wonder what percentage of aspies are in the 10% group?

I hold my pen the exact same way. I noticed the difference when i started to learn script and couldn't write my signature fluidly like most of the kids in my class. But like most things I do differently noticing it and trying to change it doesn't do much good... its just comfortable to me and i don't care about my handwriting anymore.

Same here, I think the way I hold a pen is normal, it's comfy and I enjoy writing.

My posture is similar to the original poster's, however my pen/pencil is angled inward instead of outward.

A video:

http://toggi3.com/writing_toggi3.mov

EDIT: I didnt notice but photo booth mirrored the image. Too lazy to turn it the other way or do it again. You'll get the idea.

writing hurts.

I hold my writing utensil between my ring finger and my middle finger.

[quote="neongrl"]Spin off the handwriting thread - do you hold your pen 'correctly'? I once heard someone call my grip the 'Chimpanzee Grip' - thumb covering the first joint of my finger. That's how I've always done it and no one ever tried to correct it. My handwriting (usually printing) is pretty neat though, average for a female. (Sometimes I end up pretty far up the pen too, closer to the middle at times instead of holding it at the bottom closer to the writing tip.) Here it is:



My grip has always been irregular and they could never get me to change it but it works for me. But my handwriting isn't so neat though

In school I was always in and out of 'special' classes - being mute as a young child meant I was behind in English and I didn't join in so as they didn't know what was 'wrong' with me they kept kicking me into 'special' classes, I'd have fun skipping out of classes until bored, then get my mother to point out I was too smart for these classes so I'd get put back in mainstream classes again.

One teacher in these 'special' classes used to constantly scorn me and give me detention because I refused to write properly; with the pen perfectly vertical...I always used a fountain pen, it cost a fortune in broken pens and damage to desks

I hold my writing implement correctly, but when we were taught handwriting I was still unable to speak and join-in with classes, teachers ignored me as they thought I was simple-minded and so I taught myself in privet...so although my writing is still neater than some, I can't write smoothly so it's uncomfortable and difficult to keep it tidy.

But hey, this is what computers are for

I too am a lefty. I hold my pen with my thumb and index fingers at eleven and one positions on the pen, and they touch each other. My middle, ring, and pinky fingers are held tightly adjacent to one another with the pen resting on my middle finger. I don't really get a dent on my middle finger, but I often do on my ring finger.
When I write, the point of my pen is pointed toward the end of the page. I cannot write cursive at all (part of being left handed, I've discovered), but have spliced the little bit I can do with cursive into print so my signature looks decent. When I was in elementary school, I actually had a 504 accomodation stating that I could not write in cursive; however, my fifth grade teacher thought I was a lazy child who simply convinced my parents I couldn't write cursive (funny, because she was left handed too). The principal was visited by my parents over this matter and she simply said that the teacher was allowed to not uphold it.
I have written with a quill and ink and can safely say that after years of practice, I do not get ink all over my hands.
I have noticed that my handwriting very closely resembles many lefties. Has anyone else noticed this?

i can only say that i write in a similar manner, with the top of the writing instrument facing away from me. i do get a dent on my middle finger. i also have a problem with smudging under my left hand, which i can only get around by using an envelope under my writing hand. i have no idea how any other leftie writes.

You really ought to. Sometimes, it's scary how similar it is. When my friend Carlos and I were talking, we actually had to write in different colored pens to tell who wrote what. My godmother's son Chas and I also write almost identically, as did my boss's oldest son; I would often get in trouble for stuff he did because she would look at the handwriting and not the initials, not realizing that there were precious few differences. Funny, because we held the pen differently.

Here's how I hold mine:



Is this weird? I'm not sure what the natural way to hold a pen is.

I hold a pen as if my hand was a squid, same with cutlery too, looks kind of awkward, but it's comfortable.

I had to grab a pen and write something to answer this..

The pen rests on the first joint of my middle finger, right down by the tip. The index and thumb grip the sides to steer, and the top of the pen leans against my knuckle - back and too the right.

I definitely hold the pen in a death grip.

My handwriting is atrocious - I remember hating cursive writing in 3rd grade... in 11th grade my English teacher made me start typing my papers.... I've never looked back.

Like, I open notepad instead of reaching for a pen if I need to jot down a note.

Not only am I left handed but survived Catholic school still left handed... they suggested one single time to make me 'right' and momma bear nearly tore the nuns' heads off.

I use a four finger grip - the pen rests on the first knuckle of my ring finger. The other two fingers rest on the top and my thumb supports the other side - like a typical 3 finger grip but with an extra finger kinda crouched on top.