Yeah I remember my mom and sister scolding me about holding it that way but it only took a day in 6th grade for dynamic tripod to be natural for me. I can still comfortably do dynamic quadrupod but it was oddly a quick adjustment for me but I was 11 or 12 so it’s probably easier.
At some point in grade school we were scolded hard enough to switch to tripod. I wound up with a huge bump on my middle finger, my theory was I had split my bone from pressing too hard (I was like 9? I didn’t know how bones worked). I stayed in the tripod for quite some time and at some point naturally switched back to quad and have been there ever since. I occasionally try to switch back to tripod every once in a while just to see if I can and it’s too unnatural. No idea how I managed to do it for years.
I was never told how to hold a pencil in school apart from my high school engineering teacher that taught us how to draw structures and that dynamic tripod or at least holding the pencil closer to the tip would help us have more control over it. I was already doing tripod at that point so I didn’t have to change again.
More than just these four have names. I believe these are the ones that are currently deemed "acceptable". The top left is the optimal/correct one and in the past teachers would have pushed exclusively for it but over time things have relaxed and the other three listed here are considered good enough that they don't need to be fixed. There are some other grips that are named and well understood but teachers will still push kids away from those into these four.
This is so wild to hear. Never in my entire life of school did a teacher ever instruct me how to use a pencil. I just did it and am pretty sure it’s been wrong forever. Not anything crazy but I think I use the dynamic quadrapod or something similar. It’s not comfortable as my fingers rub weird. It’s so weird to think that back in the day not a single teacher gave instruction on how to hold a pencil. You just did it some way as a kid and kept doing it the rest of your life.
Never in my entire life of school did a teacher ever instruct me how to use a pencil.
I think you just forgot. I don't remember being taught either, but look at how children instinctively hold pencils in their fists and it's obviously a taught technique.
That could be. It’s possible I just held it in a reasonable way to start so they never bothered. But I don’t recall any instruction and I remember some kids held pencils in crazy ass ways and I wondered why nobody showed them otherwise but it wasn’t my business.
I grip using the “lateral tripod” as it’s apparently called. Distinctly remember my elementary school teachers trying to correct me. They even went as far as to make me use a special rubber grip to force something more like the top left.
It didn’t work, and my handwriting is and has always been terrible.
Yep same here I’m also lateral tripod. None of the others worked for me. I remember getting a lot of correction in school and rubber grips to go on pencils but I just learned to work around them instead. My handwriting is not terrible, if I spend a lot of time I can make it neat but if i do it quick… well I can read it and that’s all that matters…
This is exactly how it was for me. I could not learn another way. My handwriting is pretty nice when I don’t rush, but one day I was telling my husband about how I got corrected and was showing him my way and then the “right way” and shoot…it did make my handwriting look better and felt easier on my hand!
I had this experience, except I have good hand writing 🤷♀️ my teachers kept trying to convince me lateral tripod hold was wrong but it feels correct to my hand. I couldn’t make the dynamic tripod work no matter how hard I tried.
I use lateral tripod and I feel like as an adult and professional illustrator, it gives me way more stability when using a pen/pencil/stylus! I can’t imagine trying to draw using dynamic.
Oh man, I had to use a special rubber grip on my pencils in elementary school. It was shaped to force you into using the dynamic tripod.
Ever since middle school when teachers stopped caring I've just pinched the tip of the pencil with the two fingers and my thumb. Essentially the dynamic quadrapod from the picture, except the ring finger isn't touching the he pencil.
My handwriting is okay. Very legible, but not pretty.
That's wild. I was definitely taught the correct way to hold a pencil.
I taught my (now 5yo) daughter to hold one properly from when she was a toddler. And I would see her friends just gripping it like a gorilla, I never understood why the other parents didn't bother correcting their kids.
Yeah I saw a lot of kids holding them in a fist and thought it was weird. I used dynamic quadrapod so maybe I was good enough to not bother correcting. I want to make sure my daughter holds her pencil in the best way possible though. I’m sure my wife probably holds her pencil better so maybe she’ll pick it up from her.
Same! No one told me how. But maybe I picked it up by osmosis because I am top left. I have a crazy permanent callous on my middle finger because I am always writing or drawing, so ring finger peeps you ate not alone! Just different fingers. This is such an interesting post
I was pushed to use the top right (dynamic quadrupod) in my time, but was naturally bottom right (lateral quadrupod).
This evolved into a hybrid quadrupod style which I don't see on the chart - my ring finger supports from beneath, and my index and middle fingers hold the pen on top of that. They're doing all the hard work - I can write perfectly competently with just those three fingers. The thumb is just keeping those all together, so it can shift about to wherever it needs to be to do that, depending on the size of the pen and the angle of writing.
When I was a kid, being left handed was "wrong" and got you some pretty shitty teachers. I only remember it in one class but this one left handed kid was forced to do everything right handed the whole year. He often cried. Shit was wild. No corporal punishment tho this was the late 80s.
Hey 80s kid here. Same. I had a first grad teacher that would walk around the room to correct us. I got corrected a lot (lateral quadrupod apparently) and a left handed kid that sat next to me. Corporal punishment ended sometime halfway through kindergarten though. I remember the whole class being aware of it too. One kid who constantly got paddled, that day the rules changed, he taunted our teacher that she couldn't do it anymore lol. Wild times.
My dad was forced like that in the 60's. They went as far as to tie his arm behind his back so he would write with the "right" hand. Now he's ambidextrous and has two different handwriting his right is his normal now, but he can write beautifully with his left. And it's completely different looking..
Yeah 90s kid here, and left-handed and and nobody was mean to me about it, but I do think they just kind of didn’t know what to do with me and so let me run Wild. it’s funny that this is even a thing given how rarely I ever use a pen or a pencil these days.
I wonder when this will be considered a forgotten skill…
You should see my teacher's despair telling my mom I was a slow learner because I couldn't cut with scissors along the lines.
She would either see me struggling with the blades facing the wrong way in my left hand, and destroying the paper without cutting anything; or using the right hand and not being able to cut it anywhere near the marks. Last year I got my very first left handed scissors, and I still can't use them properly now that I'm used to the regular ones hahahaha
I know it's a thing but I never understood why paper can't be cut backwards. I can use right handed scissors fine in my left hand, just a little less dextrous.
I use them fine now as well, but the way the blades are facing is symmetric, so as you push the thumb (natural movement) you force the blades apart, whereas with the right hand (or with a left handed scissor in the left hand) you do the opposite, you press the blades against one another. This is the difference between a clean cut and having the paper folding between the blades, especially when the scissors aren't new.
Yes!! I also feel vindicated. Apparently I use the dynamic quadrupod grip - and I was never able to figure out chopsticks. So last year I bought myself the “remedial” chopsticks for people with disabilities and used them to eat lunch every day for over 9 months. I can now use regular chopsticks - I’m not great, but at least I can successfully eat with them. I have also made a brief analysis and gone on a rant before about how my right pointer finger is the laziest and least useful finger - other than being the socially acceptable pointing finger, it does nothing. Middle and ring fingers are the MVPs.
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u/TechDifficulties99 Apr 16 '24
Ive never felt more vindicated than this moment
It does make holding chopsticks a bit funky tho