The latest debate dividing the internet: How you draw an 'X'

[Psihala]

How do you draw an X? Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it?

But as with many deceptively complex questions that have come before it, from the legendary dress debate of 2015 to the battle over how a dog would wear pants to last year’s Yanny v. Laurel dustup, the internet is divided.

https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-co...ry?id=60527215

[ASL]

They left out the chevron/v methods. That is ><, v^, and all their possible variations. Clearly the powerful line segment lobby has had compromised the study.

[TallGeekyGirl]

Sometimes I think I do #8, but a few rounds of practice indicates I generally do #7. It's weird how something like this makes you have to think about something that seems so automatic.

[dfresh]

I have always been a #7 man myself. I just don't trust those who are not, and don't want them living near me, or near susceptible children. I am not prejudiced or anything, I just think they are evil, scummy people who should be rounded up and shot. But humanely.

[thorny locust]

Pretty sure I do 7.

-- which apparently means that I'm in one of the most common groups. Odd place for me to be.

[Onyx_TKD]

They concluded that people most commonly used 5 & 6 or 7 & 8 split along country lines, suggesting that all four had substantial numbers.

I wonder if the breakdown of 5 vs. 6 and 7 vs. 8 correlates with how much the people write in cursive (or if they learned cursive at all). It seems like a cursive "x" would mandate starting with a top-left-to-bottom-right stroke (i.e., options 5 or 7), since that's the stroke that joins to the adjacent letters, and it has to start at the top left if the word is being written from left to right. I would have expected that anyone comfortable writing in cursive would tend to use similar stroke patterns/order between cursive letters and print (at least those that have similar appearance in both, such as the "x"). The second stroke could be reasonably started from either end since it's a separate stroke even in cursive, presumably influenced by whoever the person learned to write from, which would explain a regional breakdown.

[ASL]

This would all be settled if we went back to teaching cursive in school and making it mandatory for college entrance exams.

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by dfresh

I have always been a #7 man myself. I just don't trust those who are not, and don't want them living near me, or near susceptible children. I am not prejudiced or anything, I just think they are evil, scummy people who should be rounded up and shot. But humanely.

That's just typical of 7ers! We are different! 8ers R no h8ers! Why can't we just agree to disagree and live peacefully together? [sings] Ebony and Ivory... [/sings]



Those starting with an upstroke, on the other hand, are clearly lizardmen!

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by ASL

They left out the chevron/v methods. That is ><, v^, and all their possible variations. Clearly the powerful line segment lobby has had compromised the study.

Some people do write it like that, >< or more often like )(, and I always wonder how the heck am I supposed to tell it apart from chi? It also depends if one is drawing the letter X or a symbol × or a Х or a ☓ etc

[DawnStorm]

Originally Posted by thorny locust

Pretty sure I do 7.

-- which apparently means that I'm in one of the most common groups. Odd place for me to be.

Yeah me too. Tell me are you left-handed? Just curious. Maybe we Sevens are quite diverse when it comes to handedness.

Nest question: how do write a slash mark (/) I always write it thusly: \
Let the debate begin!!

[GenYus234]

Originally Posted by ASL

They left out the chevron/v methods. That is ><, v^, and all their possible variations. Clearly the powerful line segment lobby has had compromised the study.

What about the spokers? (Those that write each of the four legs separately.)

They came for the spokers and I did not speak for I was not a spoker.

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

Yeah me too. Tell me are you left-handed? Just curious. Maybe we Sevens are quite diverse when it comes to handedness.

I'm going to shift back into my usual oddity and say that the answer to that question is uncertain. My mother insisted that I was left handed as a small child but trained myself to be right handed because I'd heard somewhere about teachers insisting on that when children got to school. I don't remember that (which doesn't mean much because I must have been three or four at the time, and I only have scattered clear memories from that age); but I have noticed that when I first try to do something I've never done before I sometimes start to do it lefthanded. I suspect what I actually am is mostly ambidexterous with a slight natural lefthanded bent which has been overwhelmed by years of training my right hand more thoroughly to do things than my left; though I sometimes consciously try to train my left hand also.

I can write with my left hand, but with difficulty, and the results look like a young child's handwriting. I think I do the x in the same fashion with both hands, though I beat bread dough in the opposite direction.

[DawnStorm]

GenYus--Were you a joker or a midnight toker?

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by thorny locust

I suspect what I actually am is mostly ambidexterous with a slight natural lefthanded bent.

Have you ever done any of those so-called tests that are supposed to tell you if you're naturally left- or right-handed/eyed/footed? E.g., rolling up a magazine and holding it to your eye like a telescope, which eye do you put it to? One of these involves drawing a circle with the forefinger of each hand. The circle drawn with the dominant hand will be closer to round than the one drawn with the non-dominant hand. Supposedly (it works for me, but I'm not claiming it as a reliable indicator for others).

I am naturally left-handed, but also do a few things (like bowl) with my right hand. My oldest nephew is very left-handed. My younger nephew is basically ambidextrous, with a slight emphasis on the right hand. Both my nieces are right-handed.

Seaboe

[Stan The Man]

Team 5! extra text

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by Seaboe Muffinchucker

Have you ever done any of those so-called tests that are supposed to tell you if you're naturally left- or right-handed/eyed/footed? E.g., rolling up a magazine and holding it to your eye like a telescope, which eye do you put it to? One of these involves drawing a circle with the forefinger of each hand. The circle drawn with the dominant hand will be closer to round than the one drawn with the non-dominant hand. Supposedly (it works for me, but I'm not claiming it as a reliable indicator for others).

I haven't -- but I'm highly dubious about the circle one, because my right hand has had so much more training in holding writing/drawing tools than my left.

Except that I just tried it, and the left hand circle is closer to round than the right hand circle. Hmmm. (It's also larger, for what that's worth.) -- oh, I didn't do what you described; I drew the circles with a pen. If I draw them with a forefinger, I'm going to have to find something to draw in -- snow, maybe? Otherwise I can't tell which is more circular.-- I put the rolled up piece of paper to my right eye. Which handedness does that indicate?

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by thorny locust

If I draw them with a forefinger, I'm going to have to find something to draw in -- snow, maybe? Otherwise I can't tell which is more circular.

You're supposed to draw them in the air. My right-hand circle is much closer to a backward capital D than a circle.

I put the rolled up piece of paper to my right eye. Which handedness does that indicate?

That's supposed to indicate that your right eye is dominant, as it's an eye test rather than a handedness test. I could only remember those two tests, sorry.

Seaboe

[musicgeek]

The best test I know of for eye dominance is to hold up a finger, pen, etc. at arms length and align it with an object in the distance. Cover one eye at a time and note the position of the pen/finger relative to the object. When your dominant eye is covered, the finger or pen appears to "jump" to the side compared to when viewed with your dominant eye or binocular vision.

(I'm right-handed, but left-eyed - something I found out when I was a kid at Cub Scout camp and kept shooting up into the woods at the rifle range because I couldn't properly sight on the target. Once I figured out that I needed to shoot left-handed, I was a much better shot.)

[Richard W]

For an upper-case one I'd do #5 I think. For a lower-case x (which I write as curved), none of them - I use ASL's >< method - more like )( - starting at top left, then usually linking the two )( from bottom left to top right (i.e. not lifting my pen) before drawing the right-hand side.

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by Seaboe Muffinchucker

You're supposed to draw them in the air. My right-hand circle is much closer to a backward capital D than a circle.

If I draw them in the air, they both look circular to me; but I draw them in opposite directions.

However, when I drew them on paper with a pen, they both felt circular to me; but one of them was decidedly less so when I looked at the resulting marks. So I don't know whether the ones I'm drawing in the air are actually equally circular or not.

Originally Posted by musicgeek

The best test I know of for eye dominance is to hold up a finger, pen, etc. at arms length and align it with an object in the distance. Cover one eye at a time and note the position of the pen/finger relative to the object. When your dominant eye is covered, the finger or pen appears to "jump" to the side compared to when viewed with your dominant eye or binocular vision.

I'm right eyed on either test -- though the first time I did that alignment check the straight piece of wood I was using seemed to move both times, in opposite directions, though further when I covered the left eye. The second time it only moved when I covered the left eye.

I just got new glasses today and may not have fully adjusted to them; I don't know whether that's a factor. There's not much change in the prescription, but there is some, and it's a bit larger in one eye than in the other.