We all love you, shifty disco girl.

[venta]

Note to self: There is a shift key on the right of the keyboard. Look, it's quite big, just below the enter key. You should consider using it.

Because, you see, I don't. I use the left-hand-side shift key pretty much exclusively. Obviously, if the key I'm shifting is on the LHS of the keyboard, this can involve twisting my wrist round awkwardly. If I do it too much (as I seem to have done in the last 24 hours) I end up with quite a painful sensation in the outside of my wrist.

Does anyone have a deliberate policy (or know what their accidental policy is) on shift-key use ? When do you use right or left ?

If you were typing a long string of caps JUST LIKE THIS, how would you do it ? When someone noticed a while back that I occasionally use capslock for this kind of thing there were howls of disgust and derision as if I'd been caught out shagging a donkey, or somesuch. Do you ever use capslock ? Is there an optimal length of a string of letters at which it becomes "worth it" to use the capslock key ?

Further note to self: Hey, there's a Control key over on the right, too! Who'd have thought it ?

Comments

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I always use the left shift key. What do you take me for, some kind of Tory?

I don't actually see any need to use the right-hand one at all: I use the little finger of my left hand for shifting, which means every single other key is comfortably at my other nine fingertips. Is this not how other people capitalise things then?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Apparently not - there are all sorts of mutants out there. Including me, since I mostly use my ring finger for the left shift.

Worse, there are people all over my journal using the word "pinky". I don't know why this always winds me up, but it does. Am I the only person with irrational dislikes of some words ?

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

Worse, there are people all over my journal using the word "pinky". I don't know why this always winds me up, but it does. Am I the only person with irrational dislikes of some words ?


No, it's me too. I feel the same way about 'piggies' for toes.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Why is it called the 'pinky' anyway? It's not any pinker than any of the other fingers, is it?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, dictionary.com he say:

[Probably from Dutch pinkje, diminutive of pink, little finger.]

Which doesn't really answer the question, just transfers it. But it does at least suggest we can blame the Dutch.

OED, he say:

[wimble.livejournal.com]

pink, a.² and n.⁷

Of obscure history; as adj. used chiefly in pink eye, pink nye, where it seems to be related to Du. pink ooghen: see PINK v.2; the n. is used more widely in Sc.: cf. Du. pink the little finger, also a young bullock, a steer; pointing to an original sense ‘something small’.]

A. adj. Small, contracted, diminutive; in the obs. or arch. phrase pink eye, pink nye, a small eye, a winking or half-shut eye: see PINKENY.

B. n. Sc. Something very small: a. A diminutive specimen or creature; brat, elf (obs.); b. A very small hole or spot, a small peep of light.

Re: OED, he say:

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

So I have a small cow on each end of my hand. Yay.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

'Personal'. One word in the English language that should be shot and replaced by something marketing departments can't spell in the contexts where it was used with its proper meaning before.

Also 'original'.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

From use in the pizza trade, we can conclude that "personal" is synonymous with "small".

Hence the Depeche Mode lines: "Your own ickle Jesus // someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares". Or something like that.