Do Left-Handed Reporters Have an Advantage?

Among the 21 court reporters who responded to Planet Depos’ inquiry as to who is and who is not left-handed, an amazing 24 percent were south-paws, a statistic rivaling baseball’s 25 percent.   Worldwide, on average, only  1 in 10 people is left-handed.  That’s a mere 10 percent! So the question becomes, why do left-handers appear to be much more well-represented among court reporters?

Nature’s Experiment?  Handedness and Early Childhood Development, a study by NIH, suggests that “left-handedness may be advantageous for specific activities because it brings about a shift of dominance toward the right hemisphere, enhancing visuospatial functioning carried out on that side of the brain (Heilman 2005).”  That same study goes on to discuss an over-representation of left-handers among creative artists, architects, musicians and mathematicians.  Considering the fact that 4 of America’s last 7 presidents were left-handed (57%), the question is do left-handed politicians have an upper hand over their right-handed counterparts?

Court reporting training programs have always considered musicians as having a leg-up in court reporting school because of their already honed hand-eye-ear coordination.  Now that scientists have discovered that language function among righties is localized to the left brain hemisphere among 95 percent of its population, while lefties exhibit only a 70 percent left-hemisphere for language dominance among their population, it seems that people who process language more evenly across both brain hemispheres have an advantage when it comes to reporting — so if you are a lefty, and looking for an amazing career, consider court reporting.  You may just have an edge over your right-handed peers.