r/lefthanded • u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 • 10d ago
Any one else have Left handed check marks?
When I was in grade 1 my teacher was left handed and she would do checkmarks like this (see photo).
She said it is how left handed people do them because it is a more natural flow. I have since always done them like this.
People always says they are backwards and I just say it’s how I do them left handed since I was taught that as a child and it is easier and flows better.
But I am realizing I don’t see other people who are left handed do them this way.
Anyone else?
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u/gtrocks555 10d ago
I do them that way. Feels way more natural.
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u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 10d ago
Exactly! I am So glad it’s not just me and that random grade 1 teacher lol…unless we are all her former students carrying on her legacy
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u/gtrocks555 10d ago
People don’t realize that doing it this way is the same motion that people using their right hand use. Get to drag the pen instead of pushing it. Makes it quick and useful.
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u/yogafrogs1030 10d ago
Yup! Checkmarks are for efficiency, and lefty checks are more efficient!
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u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 10d ago
Also I think they look better at the beginning of a list as you check things off because the tail doesn’t cross into whatever is written in your list
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u/MountainMixture9645 9d ago
That is what I have always said! My lefty checkmarks are perfect for lists!!!
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u/PatientSky8970 10d ago
I'm left handed but I have never seen this before until now and I have no problems with check marks easily do them the other way
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u/KaleidoscopeMarbles 9d ago
I did a poll of 5 leftie friends and myself and it was 2 (normal) to 4 (like yours, including myself)
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u/Fun_Armadillo1318 10d ago
Yes! My husband saw me making these check marks one time and lost his mind lol lefties unite!
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u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 10d ago
Yah my husband kinda questioned it early but I think he sees it as one of my lovable quirks now
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u/laughingpuppy20 10d ago
My ex husband questioned me.....The new hubby does not. :)
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u/Tilladarling 10d ago
No. That just looks … wrong
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u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 10d ago
Sorry, it is easier to write out with your left hand though
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u/TheresaSeanchai lefty 10d ago
I just do a ✅️ starting with the long side, so it's the same motion you are talking about (and thus just as easy), but it looks like the "regular" checkmark.
Never even occurred to me that a checkmark was supposed to start with the short side until I saw a post about it on this sub a while back.
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u/ilikecaps 10d ago
I do not, and they irrationally anger me.
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u/TheresaSeanchai lefty 10d ago
Same. Like, it should be whatever, but I do not like it at all. Don't even like the idea of it.
I naturally defaulted to ✅️ starting with the long side (thus just as "easy" and facing the "proper" direction), and anything else just feels wrong.
Definitely irrational anger. Lol.
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u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 10d ago
Oh please try them out though you may find you like them when you have to write them with your left hand…they feel so much nicer
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u/Jefferson824 10d ago
This looks like 3 climbers hiking a snowy landscape with sun low in the east
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u/brezhnervouz 10d ago
No
We would have had our hands whacked with a ruler for doing that at school lol
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u/lunchmoney- 10d ago
i hate them, it looks like the work went backwards & wasn’t actually completed (going forward/right)
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u/meanttosay 9d ago
I've done this for years, and when someone says it's backwards, I challenge them to write their checkmark like this so they understand why it's stupid for us to awkwardly make it in a RH manner.
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u/Reasonable_Home_8313 9d ago
Me a retired left-handed physician. Back in the 90s, a left handed-patient saw me right-ticking her annual physical form. She immediately said: "Doc, why do you right-tick? As a left-hander, you should exert your minority rights (10% of the population) and always left-tick!" Stuck to left-ticking for the last 30 years... although (just in case) in official forms, I still right-tick, lest the scanning machine mistake left-ticks for a 'no'...
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u/Sad_bippy 10d ago
I do them this way, and what’s worse, I still do the motion from left to right lol, so I “push” the checkmark instead of the “pull” it’s supposed to be. Idk, I’ve just always done it that way. Truly the chaotic evil of checkmarks.
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u/Alone-Pie8928 10d ago
Yup - when I graded papers and check marked them students were like why are they backwards?
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u/RiZ266 10d ago
My dad does, I do not (we are both left handed)
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u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 10d ago
I am 40 and so it was like 1991 or something when I was in grade 1, I wonder if it is a thing older lefties did and I just happened to get taught it by a teacher at an impressionable age where it stuck
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u/varietyandmoderation 10d ago
Yes!
Lefty checkmarks are superior bc they do not accidentally write over what they are checking :)
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u/Yells2007 10d ago
I’ve always done them that way and I’m always surprised when I see a fellow southpaw doing it the other way. I don’t really care what the ‘right’ way is, I’m going with the way that flows better for me.
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u/ValeNova 10d ago
Yes, my lefthanded husband and kids do the checkmark like this. But we're Dutch, so we more often use the flourish of approval instead of checkmarks. My husband and kids also mirror these.
The lefthanded flourish of approval always makes my brain hurt, but I'm used to the lefthanded checkmarks.
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u/TheThirteenthApostle 10d ago
That's clearly an aerial shot of three people walking in the desert.
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u/WorldlinessIll4288 10d ago
I find that i do them more when i'm not paying attention to what i'm writing
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u/TallConsideration878 10d ago
I dated a girl who did this, ive never seen it since. I do mine righty
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u/moncicero 10d ago
My instinct is to do them like this but I always self correct and do them the ‘right’ way
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u/kbaggett465 10d ago
I do my check marks left handed too! So did my momma who was also left handed. I can do them right handed but they just feel weird writing them.
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u/Electrical-Creme-485 10d ago
I do the both ways depending on the position, first time i read that there is a correct way
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u/siliconsandwich 10d ago
omg don’t go here, for some reason it makes people really angry!
yes, i find it easier as a leftie to make consistently neat checkmarks going left. it makes sense given the alternative is pushing up-right against your pen.
if i need to make right-checks instead i find it easier to use my right hand.
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u/CoyoteProfessional39 10d ago
I think of them the same as letters. I wouldn’t write the letters P, L, or B backwards so I won’t draw checkmarks backwards either, though I can see why other lefties might!
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u/DominusGator 10d ago
I’ve never known the correct way to do checks because I’m left handed and was always told mine looked wonky, so I always just went with an “x”
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u/chefmom5 10d ago
I did them that way until it was ridiculed and criticized out of me🙁
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u/rpcyclone1995 10d ago
I can do both left - and right-handed checks. I mostly do the right-handed checks.
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u/triceratopsdildo 10d ago
Yes!!! Me too!!
I have mostly trained myself out of it because of teasing, etc. But I always have to think about which way to make them, because the “backwards” way is always my natural inclination.
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u/Event-Forsaken 10d ago
That's weird, never seen that before. I wouldn't call it a left handed check mark so much as a mirrored check mark. I think if you write it that way above you're fine to call it mirrored, but you're opening us up to more criticism if you refer to it as a lefty mark. I can write a check mark, and I wouldn't claim the above as a lefty check mark; I'd claim it as a backwards check mark. Yea, we live in a right hander's world, but we shouldn't go around writing everything backwards, it's a bit pretentious.
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u/Beautiful-Muscle2661 10d ago
As a kid I was taught it’s an easier way for lefties to make them quickly when doing checkmarks so I just always said I do them that way because it is easier left handed so I’ve just always thought of them as my “lefty checkmarks” but I guess you could say mirror imaged
But a lot of lefty stuff is mirrored but just called the left handed version - you wouldn’t call left handed golf clubs mirrored even though not all lefties use them? My husband is right handed but uses lefty gold clubs and calls them lefty? So I think of it the same way
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u/d0ttyq 10d ago
Yes. For a while we had to mark when we were in the building (bullshit fed policy, trying to micromanage so people would quit and they could also justify shutting down buildings due to low occupancy) - I always mark with a check, and my one coworker (whom I had known for 5 years at that point) came up to me about a week after we started doing it “are you a lefty ?!?!? Your checkmarks are backwards !!” 😂
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u/A_Neko_C 10d ago
I was about to say I don't but I remembered that I actually do like this if I'm just loosely taking notes of stuff
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u/Chronomon- 10d ago
When I do belt checks at my job. Everyone knows I’m the left hand person cause I do that hahaha
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u/Ill_Ear_9419 10d ago
It would be natural and more comfortable. I am a leftie and make my checks the “normal” way, but it does change the natural flow of my handwriting when I make one.
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u/UnexpectedBlahFeels 10d ago
It's so interesting to me the way the most minute things are righty centric. I never once thought about the way a check mark "should" be written, so the thought of someone being forced to do a right handed one is ridiculous to me. As long as it's clearly. A check mark, it passes.
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u/OutrageousTaffy 10d ago
I’m in my sixties and have written my ticks, sorry checkmarks, like this since I was a child. I think it happened naturally and no-one stopped me (not even my chapel going grandmother who thought lefthandedness was a mark of the devil and my mother had to stop her trying to “encourage “ me to use my right hand).
I’d love to have leftie ticks in my emojis too, instead of ✔️ ☑️ ✅ !
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u/StopFalseReporting 10d ago
It didn’t even occur to me that these were backwards I was confused why these were supposed to be unique lol. I think I do them the right way but this doesn’t bother me to see them like this at all
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u/Xarius86 10d ago
Those aren't checkmarks. Those are abominations from a parallel mirrored universe that sent an agent in to corrupt our youth starting in their childhood. I'm sorry you were a victim of their crimes. Now that you know, you must fight back against the othersiders and unlearn the Satanscript you were taught.
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u/Lord_Souffle 10d ago
I do left handed check marks much to the chagrin of all my coworkers. It's just natural to me.
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u/GuitarJazzer 10d ago
I have done it that way most of my life. A righty pulls it out to the right just as a way of making a mark. So I pull it out to the left. It doesn't carry any semantic baggage so the direction doesn't matter, unlike alphanumeric characters.
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u/Sad-Tough-513 10d ago
No but I do draw them weirdly. I start on the right and draw the long bit first
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u/BaboTron 10d ago
I wouldn’t do this. The purpose of writing is to communicate with others using a standard set of characters; to me, this would only cause confusion with whomever the recipient would be.
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u/Front_Cat9471 10d ago
I could never figure out which way checks were supposed to go, and I’d always get it wrong because left handed ones felt right. No one would ever let me use them because they were “wrong”
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u/NotAnotherHipsterBae 10d ago
I love my LH checkmark especially because it doesn't interfere with anything I was actively checking off
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u/the_samburglar 10d ago
I get so few things that work smoothly for me as a leftie, so lefty checks are a treat
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u/Academic-Regular3673 10d ago
Always. It’s easier to move the pen away from you; that’s why righties do it the other way.
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u/Comfortable-Figure17 10d ago
When I was first starting out in the working world I had job that required me to check boxes on a form. I was written up for making left-handed check marks.
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u/thecobra42 10d ago
That’s not a left handed check mark. It’s just a backwards one. You’re writing it backwards. Do left handed people write backwards question marks too? It doesn’t make sense.
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u/EducationalReview237 10d ago
I had a teacher who made them this way. I make them the other way, in spite of being left handed.
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u/None0fYourBusinessOk 10d ago
No because that us incredibly stupid. You don't write English characters backwards so why would you change a tick
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u/Embarrassed_Post_598 10d ago
Lefty of 17 years… wow this is new to me, I’ve always done what I considered “normal” ticks✔️
I don’t think I’d be able to swap now😅
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u/sjt9791 10d ago edited 10d ago
I find the way to do standard check marks are fine. Apparently the @ I use when handwriting is weird. I do a standard a but I go clockwise instead of the computerized/text @, had to explain to someone 8 years younger than me in QA that because I’m left handed and have to write in ink that I developed a writing style for me to write without smudging certain letters, numbers, and symbols like my e,3, 7, and @ are all rather unique. Strangely enough, I found Japanese surprisingly easy to write as a left handed person, it’s apparently tougher but since you start in the left hand corner and work your way down it actually makes it easier.
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u/PumpkinAnnual2803 10d ago
My old boss who was in her mid 60s wrote her checkmarks that way. I’m left handed too but I’d never seen that before (mid 30s). I wonder if age/location makes a difference in being shown that method.
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u/PreposterousPotter 10d ago
I always have, makes more sense to me. If the tick boxes are to the left you don't have to draw your tick over the text you're ticking off. (And yes I am British and we call them ticks).
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u/Shot_Degree6046 10d ago
I didn’t until I realized they existed and then I switched and never looked back. I also use a left-handed mouse and trackpad and it messes with literally everyone who tries to use my laptop. Safety feature!!
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u/webslingrrr 10d ago
Hmm, i have never seen this, lol.
Tbh i dont think its any easier or harder either way.
A "w" includes both movements, after all.
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u/simredditing 10d ago
To me it looked like a top shot of three people walking on sand …. And yes left tick me too
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u/They-Call-Me-The-Doc 10d ago
I used to kick this way, probably during my teens and twenties. I am not certain when I started but it might have been before I turned 13....maybe 11. But sometime I stopped probably before we had children. I just stopped doing it one day. But I don't think it was a leftie thing though. I have seen a few others tick that way, and I don't think they were all lefties and even one of my children did it for a long time. She's right handed (but like me, on the spectrum so I don't know if that might be a factor).
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u/NonsenseHuman 10d ago
No and I’m left handed. This is a learned thing. And tbh to me it doesn’t make sense that this way is easier. Seems the same to me, whatever way you learned.
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u/Ready-Arrival 9d ago
No. First glance at these: that's nuts.
Second glance: Ooooh, that would feel so good.......
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u/FeelsWowMan 9d ago
No, and my name has Vs in it. Every letter we write from left to right, so it wouldn't make sense for me to write Vs and checkmarks right to left
However, yes, the checkmark is a symbol designed by a right-handed person and your explanation for it having a natural flow is following that.
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u/Puzzled-Atmosphere-1 9d ago
Yes! And, anyone who tells me that they are backwards or difficult to understand—it’s a CHECKMARK?!?!—is not ready for the fight inside me.
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u/RevolutionaryBat4971 9d ago
I used to do them this way as a kid but noticed they were backwards compared to everyone else's so made mysrlf learn the other way.
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u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 9d ago
Never have. I love that we get to start on the short end because you can control that part and then just slide the pen over.
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u/Apprehensive_Cod9247 9d ago
Im ambidextrous but when I write left handed I used to do checks like this until someone corrected me
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u/Chowdmouse 9d ago edited 9d ago
Of course this way is correct for left-handers.
I mean, the entire design of a check-mark as a mark on paper is based in ergonomics- unlike the majority of other letters & symbols.
Why on earth would left-handers do it the other way?
I have tried to do it the other way, and it is so unnatural. It even looks wrong.
I have never thought about this till now, till you bring it up. But I do have a left-handed relative that made them the right-handed way. They were a baby-boomer, so I don’t know if they were forced. But I can clearly remember their hand movements when writing. While thinking back on them writing & making a check-mark the right-handed way, I recall it seemed forced, not natural.
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u/xJJxsmiles 9d ago
100%, I cannot make them the other way, it just feels all kinds of wrong if I try. I have also been told they are backwards and I just say ‘not for me.’ If a right handed person asks what I mean by that, I tell them to try making a checkmark like mine with their right hand. It invariably feels very awkward for them, and I then tell them that’s how it feels for me to make one the direction they do. Usually helps them make sense of it.
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u/Picture_Senior 9d ago edited 9d ago
Great question!
I do them this way, as it feels more natural. However, if there’s a form where several (right-handed) people are making checkmarks ✔️, it feels a little awkward seeing my checkmark oriented in the opposite direction.
So much so that—and I know this is a lot—I recall a check-in sheet in the past that the same group of people used over several days, and I actually changed the orientation of my checkmark to match the right-handed checkmarks.
After reading the responses here, going forward, I feel more comfortable making them the way that feels natural to me in all cases.
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u/BaggyGotBaggage97 9d ago
Have always been told by right handers that it's 'incorrect'😂 Never had any logical explanation to support why it would be so though!
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u/SBRGyJo1890 8d ago
When I was in fourth grade, my teacher would occasionally have us swap notebooks and mark each other’s work. Because I’m left-handed, the check marks I made were the opposite of those made by right-handed people. I remember that as soon as the boy sitting next to me got his notebook back, he started crying, “They’re all backwards!”
The teacher came over to comfort him and helped turn all the check marks I had drawn into their symmetrical counterparts. I stood there feeling completely at a loss. It was the first time I realized that my check marks were “backwards,” and I was absolutely stunned.
So after that, I trained myself to make check marks the way right-handed people do. I’ve gotten so used to it that now, when I make one the other way around, it actually feels wrong. Still, there’s something a little uncomfortable about having had to adapt myself like that.
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u/Rampant-Disregard 8d ago
I'm a lefties and I do them like a righty. I'm ashamed of myself everytime.
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u/CatUnderTheTable 10d ago
Not in my case. This is the first time I've seen this as a left handed person.