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What the?

I just noticed that I only type correctly-ish with my left hand. My
right hand jumps all over the place to type with the index and middle
finger only, except for enter/shift with the pinky and backspace and
slash with the ring finger.


I thought for a while about why this might be — right hand is used to
moving over to the cursor keys and mouse, maybe? — and then I realized
that the other thing I do that builds finger strength is playing bass:
four fingers on the left hand, two on the right.


I’m slowly retraining myself, but boy does it feel weird to have to
think about how to type now, especially on IRC.

Comments 9

  1. euqsam wrote:

    Problems typing to all of us on IRC because of your bass!?

    Ye Gods!

    All your us are belong to bass!

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 4:32 am
  2. citizenx wrote:

    I type sort of erratically, but it works fine for me. Why bother fixing something what ain’t broken?

    Although I admit it is sort of odd that you use only those two fingers on your right hand. Amusing, almost.

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 4:38 am
  3. Rich wrote:

    Because it hurts! There’s a lot of unnatural stretching and twisting involved in typing that way. Programming is particularly bad because of all of the { } = _ . / involved.

    Position your hands on the home row normally, and hit “}” or “=” with your middle finger, and watch what your wrist does.

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 4:45 am
  4. pthalogreen wrote:

    where is } on your keyboard? for me it is alt-gr n so the image is lost to me. :)

    I don’t have this problem. My dad started me on a typing tutour program/game at the age of 4 or so, and I became a bit OCD about it when I was 10ish, so all fingers on the right keys for me.

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 5:05 am
  5. citizenx wrote:

    That’s a good point. I hadn’t really considered that because my errating, not-entirely-correct typing is not based on the home row very strongly. When I’m doing something unusual (such as your example), the entire hand moves; there’s no odd and uncomfortable stretching or wrist movement.

    By all means, do not strain your delicate hands. Those things are important.

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 5:08 am
  6. Rich wrote:

    I learned to type correctly at some point — I’ve just adapted poorly since.

    “]” and “}” (the latter is shifted) on a US keyboard:

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 5:29 am
  7. opal1159 wrote:

    I self-learned to touch-type, I use all of my fingers (but my thumbs almost exclusively do the space bar and, like, alt-tabbing and such), I usually hit the right shift with my pinky finger curled since that makes it the right length, and I’m working on keeping my wrists not deviated. =)

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 6:11 am
  8. mrrules wrote:

    Sounds like too much one-handed typing to me! :-)

    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 10:15 am
  9. deviant_ wrote:

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    Posted 18 Mar 2004 at 2:29 pm