There was this article posted here on HN about the geodemography of left handedness in the US, and all sorts of discussion about past culture of eschewing LH'ded children in schools and such...
and I was surprised that no one brought up the very real downsides of being left handed in a left-to-right writing system region of the world (which is most of it). Most comments were leaning towards backwards conservatism and straight up malice with regard to students being forced a hand in writing early in school and it seemed no one brought up the very real practical reasons for preferring to write right handed, especially with ink.
And I say this as someone who is completely ambidextrous when writing but does not do the 'hook hand' left hand to write, and thus I usually write right-handed with pens and pencils. I have a left handed friend who does write that way and it just screams RSI/Carpal Tunnel to me.
> Most comments were leaning towards backwards conservatism and straight up malice
That's because this is why it was done. My parochial school in the 1990s did not allow me to use my left had because of the associations with evil, and one need not look further than the latin word for left to realize how entrenched this mindset was. To extrapolate that into a beneficial practice for writing styles seems like an unfounded stretch.
Making left handed people write right handed doesn't make them right handed.
As a T-ball coach, I had every player bat left-handed in the first inning and right-handed in the second inning. They alternated each inning. I was surprised how much this upset parents.
"My child is right handed!" some insisted. I wondered how they could know that about a child who had never swung a bat before. I also wondered why a parent would want their child to be so limited.
This is hysterical: you are a T-ball coach for tykes, which are just picking up their first good coordination, and you let them feel their way, and someone tells you otherwise. Wow. You are good, while you need 6 foot tall signs for helicopter parents that say "Do not drink engine cooling fluid!"
You are a saint..
I wonder if those issues similarly affect the right handers among the 2 billon or so users of right-to-left writing systems?
Is there a significant difference in left-handedness in RTL countries? It seems strange to me that an RTL writing system would develop in a vast majority right handed environment, for the same reasons that left handed people have issues with LTR systems
No, RTL cultures still have the 10ish percent lefties. The difference is, RTL cultures developed writing styles and hand positions to work with RTL. Whereas LTR cultures treat lefties as an afterthought, so lefties only hear about actual good hand positions and writing styles as adults, after decades of learning what is basically a mirror to right-handed style.