Before you read any further, draw a circle. In which direction did your pencil go? Clockwise or counterclockwise?
The way you draw is influenced by your culture and language, says Thu-Huang Ha. The journalist at Quartz studied how people draw shapes, using data from Google’s online game Quick, Draw!
Ha learned that most Americans draw circles in a counterclockwise direction. Most Japanese draw clockwise. Ha believes this relates to how round letters or characters are formed in each language. In English, they’re written counterclockwise, like C and G. But in Japanese, some characters are written with pen strokes that curve in a clockwise direction.
Drawing circles is “something we don’t think about,” Ha says. “That’s what’s fun about asking people to do it.”