Understanding of the correct usage

The English language is replete with words that challenge even native speakers. One common point of confusion arises with the tools we use to cut fabric, paper, and more. Should we say “scissor” or “scissors”? This article aims to clarify the proper usage and help readers understand the nuances behind these terms.

At its core, the difference between “scissor” and “scissors” lies in the concept of singular and plural nouns. In English, plural nouns refer to more than one of something, while singular nouns refer to just one. However, the word “scissors” is what’s known as a pluralia tantum, which means it is used in its plural form to refer to a single item (e.g. trousers, glasses).

When to Use “Scissors”

“Scissors” refers to the cutting instrument we are all familiar with. This term is always used in the plural form, even when referring to one pair. This usage is because “scissors” are seen as comprising two symmetrical parts that work together, similar to other tools like pliers and tongs. However, don’t be mistaken. The two symmetrical parts are not each individually referred to as a “scissor”, but rather, a blade.

Is “Scissor” Ever Correct?

While “scissors” is the correct term for the cutting tool, “scissor” can be correct in different contexts, particularly as a verb. When used as a verb, “to scissor” means to cut with scissors or to move in a way resembling the action of scissors. “Scissor” also appears in compound nouns, where it describes objects related to or functioning like scissors, but here it is typically used in the singular form. 

Examples include:

• “Scissor lift” (a platform that moves vertically)
• “Scissor kick” (a swimming or martial arts move)

In these cases, “scissor” acts as an adjective to modify another noun, and its singular form is grammatically correct.

There is an interesting superstition about cutlery which seems of rather ancient origin. It is said that the gift of a sharp-edged tool will sever friendship. Perhaps it arose in the folkore of peasants who were uneducated in the use of sharp implements and had reason to think of them as inherently dangerous or malevolent. For example, in the courts of law it was the practice to underline a verdict of guilty by the turning of the edges of the guards’ halberds toward the prisoner upon his condemnation.

This ancient superstition has almost disappeared, although in some lands the recipient of the gift of a pair of scissors or a knife will present a penny to the giver, traditionally a sure way of warding off the curse. However a Danish jingle tells us specifically:

Needles and knives will love drive away, But spoons and scissors will love amplify.

The difference between scissors and shears in English is rooted in etymology and class, not just size.

It is one of the most common questions we are asked.

The standard answer, the one the industry settled on, is a matter of size and handle shape. Scissors are smaller, designed for one hand, with equal bows. Shears are larger, sometimes requiring two hands, often with one bow bigger than the other to fit over several fingers.

It is a practical answer. It is also incomplete.

Pinking shears have unequal handles. Dressmaking shears have an angled lower blade and a large bow for the fingers. By the industry definition, both should be shears. But many people call them scissors. And many professionals who use them every day would not particularly care either way.

We wanted to understand why.

The word itself is the clue

English has a habit, inherited from the Norman conquest, of carrying two words for the same thing. One French, one Germanic. The French word tends to attach itself to refinement, to the table, to the finished thing. The Germanic word stays closer to the labour, the field, the raw material.

You eat beef, not cow. Pork, not pig. Mutton, not sheep. The animal in the field has a Saxon name. The meat on the nobleman’s table has a French one.

Scissors follows the same pattern. The word comes from the Old French cisoires, and it arrived in English in the late fourteenth century. It carried with it an association with fine work: embroidery, barbering, tailoring. The kind of cutting done in a warm room, with skill, for money.

Shears is older. It comes from the Old English scearra, rooted in the Proto-Germanic word for cutting. It was the word for the tool used outdoors, on animals, on heavy cloth, on metal. Work that did not need a French name.

Even the trade could not agree

The confusion is not new, and it was not invented by customers asking the wrong question.

In the mid-seventeenth century, the Sheffield Cutler’s Company was drawn into a dispute between scissorsmiths and shearsmiths over exactly this boundary. Who made what, and who had the right to make it. The company eventually ruled on the matter, to considerable anger from those who felt the decision had gone against them. Joan Unwin, writing about Sheffield cutlers’ marks, noted that the difficulty in separating scissors from shears had always existed, even inside the trade itself.

The ruling drew a line. The line did not really resolve anything.

What the other languages tell us

French is cleaner about it. Ciseaux for scissors, cisailles for the larger tool operated with two hands. Italian follows a similar logic: forbici and cesoie. German does not distinguish at all.

English sits somewhere in the middle, which is perhaps exactly where you would expect a language built from two traditions to sit.

So what is the answer?

Size matters, up to a point. Handle shape matters, up to a point. But underneath the practical differences is something older: a word that came in through the front door, associated with craft and refinement, and a word that was already there, associated with labour and necessity.

Whether you call a tool scissors or shears often says as much about the context of its use as it does about the tool itself.

The industry answer is not wrong.

It just does not go far enough.

Sheffield was never the only place.

Across Europe, a small number of cities and towns built reputations around the making of scissors and cutting tools. Some grew into industrial centres. Others remained quiet concentrations of specialist craft, known mainly to those inside the trade.

Most have changed beyond recognition. A few have not changed at all.

Solingen, Germany

Solingen was once known as the City of Blades, and for good reason. At its peak, the town supplied scissors, knives and razors to much of the world. The scissor-makers are gone now, but the knowledge and the equipment did not entirely disappear with them.

The Gesenkschmiede Hendrichs, a drop-forging works that closed as a factory and reopened as it stood, still operates its original machinery. Scissors are forged there today, in a building that time largely left alone.

We visit Solingen every year. Not to buy, but to exchange. Old tooling, forgings, technical knowledge. There are people there who understand this work at a level that is increasingly rare, and that conversation is worth making the journey for.

Premana, Italy

Premana is a small village in the mountains of northern Italy, and it has been making scissors and knives for centuries. The craft is still active. The quality is serious.

It is also under pressure. The younger generation is not taking it on in the numbers needed, and the workshops that remain are aware of what that means. We visit each year. The welcome is warm and the work speaks for itself, but the question of what comes next hangs over the place in a way that is familiar to anyone working in a traditional trade.

Nogent, France

Nogent, in the Champagne region, was once a centre for fine scissor and cutlery making. That tradition has largely disappeared.

Elsewhere

Other places built reputations at various points: Eskilstuna in Sweden, Albacete in Spain. The details differ but the pattern is often the same. A concentration of skill builds over generations, serves a particular market, and then contracts as conditions change.

What remains, in most cases, is the history rather than the practice.

Is scissors-making a trade, a craft or an art?

Nowadays, we think of scissors-making as a craft. The term is the best fit for our traditional processes and hand-crafted products, and it reflects our position as a small-scale producer.

It wasn’t always this way. Historically, Sheffield scissors-making was widely known as a trade. We still hear retired members of the previous generation refer to it as such.

Back in the day, there were many participants in the Sheffield scissors trade. These included dozens of scissors-making companies, specialist hardeners and die-makers, and sole traders known as ‘little mesters’ who provided outsourced services. Ernest Wright Sr. himself was the son of a little mester who specialised in scissors-boring.

By the latter decades of the 20th century, some of the other surviving firms in the scissors trade had begun to use automated processes such as CNC (computer assisted cutting) to make their scissors, and these certainly could not have been considered as craft businesses.

But now that only a handful of companies are making scissors in the UK, it would be misleading to identify our activities as a trade. Most trades have some degree of collective identity, organisation through governing bodies and specific regulations. There is no such ecosystem for scissors-making on a local, national or global level.

If we belong to any trade, it might be more accurate to say Ernest Wright is part of:

• The Sheffield cutlery trade. Scissors are traditionally classed as cutlery (because they cut), and we are members of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire along with a reasonable number of other firms making cutlery (mostly tablewares) in Sheffield.
• The British craft trade. Really, British craft is too diverse to be considered a trade, which is perhaps why the term ‘craft trade’ is not in use. However, we share much in common with some of our fellow craft businesses (especially those who are members of Heritage Crafts), including a focus on hand skills and traditional processes. Collectively, these craftspeople function somewhat like a trade.

We appreciate that some of our supporters have described scissors-making as an art. It’s true that there’s artistry in many aspects of the putters’ work, from grinding the scissors-blades to precisely marrying them together.

However, we prefer the term ‘craft’ because it emphasises that we’re making functional items. Of course, many people use the scissors and shears we’ve crafted to make art of their own.

People often ask what makes a true left-handed scissor different.

It sounds a simple question, though it usually begins with a frustration. A left-handed person who has always found scissors awkward. Fabric folding instead of cutting. Paper slipping between the blades. A line that seems impossible to follow cleanly.

Often they assume the scissors are blunt.

Usually, it is something else.

Much of the confusion comes from the fact that many scissors described as left-handed are not truly so. Some have bows shaped for the left hand, which can make them more comfortable to hold, but the blades remain arranged as they would be in a right-handed pair.

A true left-handed scissor is another matter altogether.

It is a mirror image.

That may sound a small thing, but it changes everything. Scissors cut not only through the closing motion of the hand, but through a slight sideways pressure we hardly notice we are applying. In a right-handed scissor, that pressure helps force the blades together. Put the same tool in the left hand and it can work against itself, encouraging the blades apart rather than together.

That is often why a cut feels reluctant.

A true left-handed pair restores that natural action.

It also does something simple but important — it lets the user see what they are cutting. Once noticed, that alone can feel revelatory.

And yet, oddly enough, not every left-handed person prefers one.

Many have spent years adapting to right-handed scissors and have developed their own way with them. Hands, like tools, learn habits. Sometimes deeply.

So there is no absolute rule.

Some people pick up a true left-handed pair and feel at once what they have been missing.

Others return quite happily to the familiar.

That seems part of the fascination of tools: they are always, in the end, personal.

People are often surprised too by how uncommon true left-handed scissors are, or why certain patterns do not exist in left-handed form.

The assumption is sometimes that one simply reverses an existing pattern.

If only it were so.

A proper left-handed version asks for its own dies, made specifically for that pattern. For a small workshop, that is a serious undertaking before a single pair is produced.

Then there is the quieter reality afterwards.

A batch of left-handed scissors may take years to find its owners.

Years, where the right-handed equivalent may have long since gone out into the world.

That has always been the challenge.

Not making them. Sustaining them.

Which is also why left-handed scissors often carry a higher price. The economics are usually built around rarity and slow return rather than extra flourish.

We have never felt that should make them a luxury.

If a tool is made properly for a left hand, why should that hand pay more for correctness?

It has always seemed an odd notion.

Perhaps that is why we have kept certain left-handed patterns in the workshop even when logic might have argued otherwise.

Some tools deserve to remain.

Not because they are niche.

Because they are proper.

And perhaps that is the heart of it.

A true left-handed scissor is not a curiosity or a special variant.

It is simply a tool made as thoughtfully for one hand as another.

As it should be.

Carbon or Stainless Steel?

There is no single answer.

Different scissors ask for different things from the steel they are made from. Some need toughness for heavy workshop use. Some benefit from greater corrosion resistance in a kitchen. Some take a finer edge. Others are easier to sharpen and maintain over decades of use.

At Ernest Wright, we use a small number of carbon and stainless steels depending on the pattern and purpose of the tool. Some have been familiar to Sheffield makers for generations.

Our steels arrive with EN 10204 3.1 mill certificates traceable to the original melt.

Carbon Steel

Traditional carbon steel scissors are still valued for the way they sharpen and cut.

Carbon steels take an exceptionally fine edge and are pleasant to maintain by hand. They develop a natural patina with age and use and require basic care to prevent oxidation.

We use two principal carbon steels.

C50

Also known as EN8 or 1.1210, C50 is a medium carbon steel containing around 0.5% carbon.

Typically hardened to around 54–56 HRC, it offers a balance between toughness and edge retention, making it well suited to hardworking scissors and shears that need to remain dependable over many years of use.

C60

C60, sometimes specified as C60E, is a higher carbon steel containing around 0.6% carbon.

Typically hardened to around 58–60 HRC, it can take a finer and longer-lasting edge than C50. Steels like this have long been associated with traditional Sheffield shears and heavier cutting tools.

Stainless Steel

Stainless steels resist corrosion far better than traditional carbon steels, making them particularly useful for kitchen and general-purpose scissors.

Stainless steel itself was developed in Sheffield in the early twentieth century, originally in response to the search for more corrosion-resistant cutlery steels.

We use two principal stainless grades.

420B

420B is a martensitic stainless steel with moderate carbon content and good corrosion resistance.

Usually hardened to around 54–56 HRC, it is tough, practical and relatively easy to sharpen, making it particularly suitable for kitchen scissors and everyday domestic use.

440B (1.4112)

440B, also known under the European designation 1.4112, is a high carbon stainless steel containing around 0.9% carbon and approximately 17% chromium.

Typical certified analysis includes around 0.86% carbon, 17.5% chromium and nearly 1% molybdenum.

Typically hardened to around 58–60 HRC, it is capable of taking a finer and more precise cutting edge while still resisting corrosion well.

It is also considerably more demanding to hot drop forge, grind and finish by hand.

More Than Steel

A good pair of scissors begins with the right steel.

But steel alone is not enough.

Geometry, heat treatment, grinding, assembly and final adjustment all play an equally important role.

A well-made pair of scissors produced from a simpler steel will often outperform a poorly made pair produced from an expensive alloy.

That understanding has long been part of the scissors trade and is still valued today.

At Ernest Wright, we continue to use steels we know well, shaped through hot drop forging, grinding and hand assembly at Kutrite Works in Sheffield.

Without the Dutch, Sheffield might never have become Sheffield.

Sheffield is proud of its steel, its cutlery, its grit. It gives credit to hard work and local character, not outside influence. That pride is earned.

But the story is more complicated.

Long before steam engines, Sheffield’s rivers did the work. The Don, the Sheaf, the Porter and the Rivelin, four rivers flowing down from the Pennines, driving grinding wheels and tilt hammers wherever the current was strong enough. The workshops followed the water.

Water, though, goes where it wants.

In the seventeenth century, a Dutch engineer named Cornelius Vermuyden came to England to drain marshland on a scale nobody had attempted before. He brought workers who understood water. Whether his influence reached Sheffield directly is something historians still argue about.

But it raises a question worth sitting with.

If Sheffield’s rivers made its industry possible, who helped England learn to manage its water?

Coal was nearby. Swedish iron arrived through the Humber ports. Trade routes connected the city to the Continent. Sheffield was never isolated. Ideas came in, materials came in, people came in, and Sheffield turned them into something nobody else could make.

What made the city remarkable was not any single advantage.

It was what happened between people.

One workshop forged. Another hardened. Another ground. Another polished. Skills passed from master to apprentice, street to street, generation to generation. No single person knew everything. Together they knew more than anyone else in the world.

That same spirit gave rise to figures such as Benjamin Huntsman, Henry Bessemer and Harry Brearley. Cast steel, mass steel and stainless steel, three revolutions, one city.

By the late nineteenth century, “Made in Sheffield” needed no explanation anywhere on earth.

So did the Dutch make Sheffield?

No.

Did Sheffield make itself entirely alone?

Probably not either.

The city became what it became because it knew what to do with everything that arrived here. That is a different kind of pride, quieter, more confident, and perhaps harder to argue with.

Including, from time to time, a Dutchman.