I’m left-handed and growing up, in school, there were never enough left handed scissors between myself and the maybe two other lefties in my class so I would often need to use right-handed scissors. But they would either not cut paper at all or kind of tear the paper, forcing me to switch to my right hand to get the scissors to cut smoothly.
Just yesterday I needed to trim a label and no matter how I angled the scissors, they would not cut the paper but they immediately did once I switched to my right hand. Thus, how do scissors “know” which hand you’re holding them in?
In: 2488
Your left and right hands are mirror images of each other, so when they operate scissors they apply pressure slightly differently. Left and right handed scissors are designed to work with these differences.
It mainly applies to thicker material or sloppy scissors. As you cut into the material, it tries to force the blades apart, and you compensate by not only squeezing the loops together, but also pulling towards your palm with your fingers, and pushing away with your thumb, to force the blades together. You need the blades aligned on the other side of each other, if you use the other hand.
With practice you can probably learn to be effective with the “wrong” scissors, but it doesn’t come naturally
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