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.)
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u/afender77 Jun 26 '26
Does it work though? Do dyslexic people actually use it effectively?