From Steve Champion
Kevin Scott asks if anybody can tell him which is the wrong end of a stick (22 January, p 27). On a trip to Trim Castle in Ireland, a museum guide informed me that the term “wrong end of the stick” derives from the practice of stirring a dung heap.
I don’t know if this story is true, but clearly sticks used for stirring would have a right end and a wrong one.
From Carol Primrose
As the granddaughter of a typesetter who worked before the advent of computers, I can assure Scott that the wrong end of the stick is the left-hand end.
Advertisement
As part of the printing process, lines of text used to be built up by adding metal blocks, embossed with letters and characters, to a metal frame called a “composing stick”. These were then inked, before being pressed against paper in the printing press. As this gave a reversed image of what was on the stick, the stick had to be set from right to left for the printed page to read from left to right.
Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire, UK
Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, UK
