A new paper rotation technique for lefty handwriting

In the previous blog from yesterday, I discussed about the difficulty in deriving LeftScripts design principles from existing academic paper and that I should allocate some time for actual handwriting practice and experiments.

To my surprise, my first session of handwriting already more than paid off. While I was figuring out a better letterform of 'z', I discovered that an aggressive-enough rightslanting that matches horizontal strokes with baseline provided the kind of tilt that my personal script needed for a comfort breakthrough. With some refinement, I'm confident it will be ready as the first public design that holds meaningful value to share.

This means I don't need as much of academic information to drive my discovery anymore. The next work is more on testing it out and understanding or theorising why it works if it does.

But wait, this feels very similar to when I arrived at the script I believed was universally awesome until yesterday. I'm definitely biased but here're the reasons I think it's different this time.

• It's extremely comfortable and readable with minutes of adjusting. It was weeks the last time I change my script
• The core principle is as simple as "Secondary stroke in parallel with baseline. Comfortably swing primary strokes as stems and you'll automatically have the optimized slant that maximises the proportion of smooth vs awkward distance". Last time I would need ~20m to explain why it helps.
• It is applicable for different slantings and letterforms. Clockwise ductus is the only requirement

This rightslanting and paper rotation technique won't work without clockwise ductus and I think it is why the rotation is the opposite of what's thought in schools even when already targeted for left-handed children which is a good real-life example of a locally optimised outcome where (adjusting paper rotation + slanting) or (adjusting letterform + slanting) alone will take you so far until you do both.

That said, while clockwise ductus now is the requirement, the argument that "Clockwise motion fits better with left hand anatomy" still is not confirmed nor debunked.