Are you sure you're right-handed?

A quick test could overturn what years of handwriting has taught you about yourself — you may not be right-handed after all.

No matter where you are in the world, most people use their right hand for most things. More than 85 per cent of us are right-handed — even foetuses at 10 weeks preferentially move their right hand.

Instead of just asking people which hand they write with, these studies, led by Dr Silvia Paracchini at St Andrews University in Scotland, actually measured how skilled each person was with their left and right hand. And their results went way beyond the basic 85 per cent divide.

They used a simple pegboard test — the kind usually used for testing manual dexterity — to measure how long it took individuals to move 10 pegs across a board. After timing people multiple times with each hand, the averaged results were converted into a score, called the PegQ.

And it turns out that we're not simply left- or right-handed; we're all on a spectrum of handedness.

The higher your PegQ score, the more right-handed you are, while a negative PegQ makes you more of a leftie. (Clearly it will take more than a quantitative peg test to rid the world of judgemental language about left-handedness).

And just because you write with your right hand doesn't mean you come up on the 'right' side of the spectrum.

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