Which of the following is a recommended safety practice when using an X-Acto knife?

• A. Use dull blade
• B. Cut away from the body
• C. Keep the blade toward the body
• D. Push hard with the blade

Answer: (B)

The main idea here is keeping yourself safe while using a sharp cutting tool. The best safety practice is to cut away from the body. When you direct the blade away from you, any slip or extra force tends to move the blade away from your hands and torso, which greatly reduces the chance of a serious cut.

Think about the other behaviors: a dull blade actually makes cutting harder, which increases the likelihood of slips and mistakes, so it’s riskier than using a sharp blade. Cutting toward the body is simply asking for trouble because a slip could bring the blade into contact with you. Pushing hard with the blade also increases the odds of losing control.

So, cutting away from the body is the safer approach because it prioritizes the path of the blade away from you, lowering injury risk while you work.