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?
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Scissors only cut correctly if the blades are pressing against each other. When you hold right-handed scissors in your right hand, the way that is natural and comfortable, you are pushing the blades together. When you put them in your left hand, you’re pushing them apart. Left-handed scissors have the blades switched (in addition to the handle looking different on the scissors that have differently sized loops for your thumb and rest of the fingers).
You can use scissors in the other hand they were designed for, by consciously applying the opposite force you normally would and pushing the blades together. But it’s a little uncomfortable.
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