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

Re: Fingery Fun

[venta.livejournal.com]

I remember my mother explaining to me that one of the fingers was known as "the poison finger", and should never be used to spread ointment, or the like.

I forget (a) whether she was seriously suggesting it shouldn't be used for this reason, (b) whether she was seriously suggesting it shouldn't be used for some more scientific reason, (c) whether she was just telling me about a superstition and (d) which finger it was anyway.

Re: Fingery Fun

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

Especially when treating dismemberment:

"Ooh, you want to rub some ointment on that."

Re: Fingery Fun

[pm215]

poison finger

...which by mental association brings me to the Japanese words, which are in order starting with the thumb:

• 親指 [oyayubi], lit. parent finger
• 人差し指 [hitosashiyubi], lit. pointing-at-people finger
• 中指 [nakayubi], lit. middle finger
• 薬指 [kusuriyubi], lit. medicine finger
• 小指 [koyubi], lit. small/little finger

Note that since 指 [yubi] can mean either finger or toe, at least the first and last of these are technically ambiguous and could mean big/little toe instead. I don't recommend typing with your toes, however.