Another difference is that calls such as R&L Thru have a different beat count depending on the starting position.  From a static square R&L Thru is 8 beats as in contra, but from a wavy line or a box, it is only 6 beats.  
MWSDers also rush their dancing because so many callers use "clipped" timing to avoid stop & go.
Rich

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 9:44 PM, Aahz Maruch via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
On Mon, Feb 22, 2016, Joe Micheals wrote:
>
> I have often thought that contra and round dancing had in common a
> person who cues/prompts ahead of the phrase of music.  MWS dancers who
> Round dancer would be able to relate to that...

That's what I would think/expect, but I've seen plenty of round dancers
who don't seem to get the concept of moving to the beat when square
dancing (I've only seen round dancing at square dances, so they're all
also square dancers).

It probably relates somewhat to what some MWSD callers derisively name
"pattern walking": people who learn a concept in one context are not
able to easily translate that into another context.  For these people,
R&L Thru as normal couples is completely different from sashayed R&L
Thru, it's two different calls that happen to be named the same.

My take is that because of the need to prime muscle memory, almost
everyone is a pattern walker at some level (e.g. many/most MWSD people
who gender swap agree that Allemande Left is one of the more difficult
calls -- despite being technically gender-neutral, you normally turn left
as a man and right as a woman to find the person you're allemanding, and
that's a difficult muscle memory to prime).
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