Do you prefer to write with your left hand? If you do, you are one of the millions of “lefties” in the world. There would be even more left-handed people in the world if many people weren’t forced to use their right hand. To understand left-handedness, it is necessary to look at the brain. The brain is divided into two hemispheres. In most right=handers, the left hemisphere is the center of language and logical thinking. This is where they do their math problems and memorize vocabulary. The right hemisphere controls how they understand broad, general ideas and how they respond to the five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere controls the left side. Both sides of the body receive the same information from the brain because both hemispheres are connected. However, in right-handed people, the left hemisphere is stronger. In left-handed people, it is the right hemisphere that is stronger. Different handedness causes differences in people. Although the left hemisphere controls language in most right-handers, 40% of left-handers have the language center in the right hemisphere. The other 60%use the left side of the brain or both sides for language. Lefties prefer not only the left hand but also the left foot. They prefer using the left foot to kick a ball because their whole body is “left-handed”. There has been an increasing amount of research on handedness. For example, one psychologist says that left-handers are more likely to have good imaginations. They are also more likely than right-handers to enjoy swimming underwater. That is because left-handers can adjust more easily to seeing underwater. Left-handedness can cause problems for people. Some left-handed children see letters and words backwards. They read d for b and was fro saw. Another problem is stuttering. Some left-handed children start to stutter when they are forced to write with their right had. Queen Elizabeth 11’s father, King George VI, had to change from left-to right-handed writing when he was a child, and he stuttered all his life. Anthropologists think that the earliest people were about 50% right-handed and 50% left-handed because ancient tools from before 8000 B.C could be used with either hand. But by 3500B,C, the tools, which were better designed, were for use with only one hand. More than half of them were for right-handed people. The first writing system, invented by the Phoenicians(3000-2000 B.C.) in the Middle East, went from right to left. The Greek began to write from left to right around the fifth century B.C. because they increasingly believed that right was “good” and left was “bad”. As time passed, more and more customs connected left with “bad.” This belief is still common in many countries today, and left-handed people suffer because if it. As the centuries passed and education spread to more levels of society, more and more people became literate. As more children learned to write, more of them were forced to write with their right hand. In the 1930s, some teachers finally started permitting schoolchildren to write with their left hand. In some countries, however, left-handed children are still forced to write with their right hand. Many famous people were left-handed. Napoleon, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein were all left-handed. Alexander the Great and Queen Victoria of England were left-handed, too. Paul McCartney of the Beatles plays the guitar the opposite way from other guitarists because he is left-handed. Are you left-handed even though you write with your right hand? Take this test to find out. Draw a circle first with one hand and then with the other. If you draw the circles clockwise (the direction the hands of a clock go in), you are probably left-handed. If you draw them counterclockwise(in the other direction), you are right-handed. The test does not always work, and some people draw one circle in one direction and the other circle in the other direction. But don’t worry if you are left-handed. You are in good company. Decide where each of the following statements is true or false. 8. Left-handed people are less likely to achieve great success in life.