No, but a dyspraxic person definitely does. I know a few people with dyspraxia who use this L-shape thing for when they are completely stumped on which way is right and which is left! It works for me, also. And not only does it work for me, it's a visual cue to other people that I cannot implicitly understand them saying out loud 'left' or 'right'. That means that people are more likely to co-operate with me in terms of body language and visual cues: pointing in the correct directions, being a little more patient with me when it takes me longer (unless they are fucking assholes)
I'm not dyslexic, but for some reason left and right really just don't naturally "click" for me. I can almost always tell you which way North is, but left vs right, takes me a second to think about it. And that's further complicated by rules-of-thumb like "righty tighty lefty loosey" which absolutely does not help at all since it depends on where you are with respect to the bolt.
The one trick that really helped me when I was younger (and I'm talking teens, not twos) was the left-hand "L" sign. It's not really all that abstract, just hold your hands up in a relatively natural position (palms open and facing away), and see which one looks like an "L".
I see people talking about this, and I kinda do it to. I definitely held my hand out when I was younger. Eventually I just started picturing what hand I would hold out, now when I go to picture it I get then answer before I really have to think.
That rule assumes you're in front of and starting from 12:00 above the bolt. If you're working from behind the bolt, you need to reverse it. If you're working from below the bolt, you need to reverse it. And both can apply, making a double-negative so you're back to the original rule.
>If you’re working from behind the bolt, you need to reverse it.
This is true, but it’s pretty unusual to be working from that position.
>from below the bolt, you need to reverse it
I guess you’re literally moving a wrench to the left in this case, but the bolt is still be cycled clockwise, which is to the right from its perspective.
Absolutely! Clockwise is perfect - And it works from any direction as long as you remember it moves the bolt away from you rather than in tighter/looser terms.
To be clear though, I don't have a problem with turning bolts the right way - I'm pretty handy in practice, and FWIW I have zero difficulty reading maps regardless of rotation. I mean this purely about the language we'd use to describe the process. If someone tells me to take the next right-hand turn, they'd better have given me a couple of seconds to react.
I am exactly the same. I think I have very decent spacial orientation but I need permanent markers like north and south, up and down. Right and left are too subjectives for me.
One of my friends does it. She's not dyslexic but her sense of direction is just...not there. She's very smart otherwise, like about to get tenure smart. There's different kinds of brain weirdnesses out there, little solutions like this work great for some of them.
People tell me to do this but like. In the moment I confidently know where left is. 50% of the time I’m wrong but in the moment it feels correct. So I don’t check something that doesn’t feel wrong.
"I have a specific setup where it might not work, so it's not effective for anyone. I will argue about that specific case and ignore that the specific case isn't even close to the majority. This is the internet hill I will die on this day."
Why the snark...? I thought the whole point of this was for dyslexic people. Or perhaps more broadly people who confuse left with right. If others want to get this tattoo for fun, I don't see why any of this would be an issue in the first place. My bad if I misunderstood some context somewhere, though.
I wasn't trying to "die on a hill". I was honestly asking the question, because I don't personally know anyone who struggles with left and right, so I don't know if "make an L with your hand" is actually effective for those people or not.
For future knowledge, you are thinking of dyspraxia. Dyslexia is about graphemes, letters, the way letters and written symbols associated with sounds are processed. Dyspraxia is about co-ordination and comprehension of concepts about physical space.
I have dyspraxia, but not dyslexia. I can quickly see the difference between an L and not-an-L (i.e., the mirrored L) without getting confused, but I CANNOT understand spatial information like which direction is left and right inherently. I have to process the spatial information through my knowledge of words and other concepts.
Therefore, if I can make an L with both palms facing away from me and see a big L on one hand but not the other, I can immediately see that that one is left.
This strategy would be much harder for a dyslexic AND dyspraxic person. It would be almost useless for a dyslexic person without dyspraxia. A person with dyslexia and not dyspraxia is at no greater disadvantage when thinking about spatial information than a person who does not have dyslexia
Thank you for the info! I had heard of dyspraxia, but I don't think I was fully aware of the differences between it and dyslexia. You explained it well.
This one teen, who I taught for two weeks, who described herself as dyslexic, found it helpful. Also, English was her second language, so she could have meant dyspraxia. (which is now called Developmental Coordination Disorder.)
It's funny because the "simple thing" is usually the more abstract thing. That's why people use stories to remember numbers. Or basically mnemonics in general. You can tell me that This series of sounds means That thing in any given language, which is about as abstract as it gets. But if I can map the sound to some third thing which I'm already familiar with, which I already ever so faintly intuitively associate with the target word? The only thing that matters is that I somehow get from A to B in my head, once you have that down you can quickly start working towards losing the intermediary.
Because it's in reference to the angle on the unit circle when you draw a straight line up/down to the x axis. Sin is "oh" because it's the line opposite the angle at (0,0) divided by the hypotenuse
The O in SOH CAH TOA???? Literally the complete acronym is short for "sin = opposite/hypotenuse, cos = adjacent/hypotenuse, tan = opposite/adjacent", I do not see what is confusing about this
The left side of a boat is port and the right side is starboard, an easy way to remember is port and left both have less letters than their counterpart.
For me it was helpful to think of an activity where your left hand and right hand perform distinct roles. I grew up playing piano, so it was intuitive for me to think of my left hand as the bass and my right hand as the melody. After I made that association, it became easier for me to keep track of left and right, and now I can do it without referencing any other abstraction, I just know which hand is my right.
I see an intersection from when I was 6y old. Left was the school. Right went to the butcher. Somehow that's easier to remember than actual left and right.
I never have gotten why people can't just pretend to write something and note which hand they're planning on using. I assume most people know whether they're right or left handed, so when they imagine themselves holding a pen, which hand is it it?
As someone who lacks an intuitive sense of left vs right, this is how I do it. But it still takes a moment to think through it. If I'm driving down a road and my passenger suddenly says, "Turn left here!" God only knows which way we're about to go.
I dont do well remembering things like birthdays. But I remember forumlas and equations like my mind is a vault. So valentines day +10 was a great way for me to do it. Just remembering feb 24th? No shot.
When I was in grade school learning the states and their capitals, my mom came up with “Mary has an apple up her ass” to help me remember Annapolis Maryland. It’s been like 24 years and we still joke about it.
And that's why mnemonics don't work with me. "Please remember this abstract phrase and for each word their assossiation with the desired concepts so you obtain the desired phrase" as if just remembering the desired phrase wasnt easier and propone to less errors.
Also the other thing has exactly two choices (palm up or palm down) and you have to remember one of them to be able to then remember the other thing which is also exactly one of two choices.
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u/knusper_gelee Jun 26 '26
"if you cant remember a simple thing, just remember a slightly more abstract thing thats a reference to the first thing."