3 ms·

Someone on Reddit suggested two dots.

• zeveb 11y ago
  Which of course doesn't help save keystrokes…
  • api 11y ago
    Sure it does: : == two keystrokes using two separate fingers . == one keystroke using one finger .. == ~1.25 (ish) keystrokes, since your finger has to move to the dot once and then tap twice and only one finger is involved :: == 3 keystrokes using two fingers
    • wallacoloo 11y ago
      I respectfully disagree. In normal typing, I don't consider a capital "I" to be significantly more taxing than a lowercase "i". Relatedly, I think there's a reason that I've never heard an argument about why we should prefer square brackets over parentheses (square brackets require no shift while parentheses do). Right off the bat, I notice that when I'm quoting something using double quotes or placing something in parentheses or curly braces, I don't even have to think about pressing shift. I type them just as quickly as any other punctuation. So I don't think there's much validity to this argument based solely on keystrokes.
      • krylon 11y ago
        > square brackets require no shift while parentheses do On a German keyboard, parentheses require a shift, but to get square brackets, one needs to hit AltGr (or "Option" on a Mac keyboard) which quickly gets annoying if one has to do it a lot. Except for that, I agree with you.
        • therein 11y ago
          But I thought "We're all living in Amerika, Amerika ist wunderbar"...
      • wtbob 11y ago
        > Relatedly, I think there's a reason that I've never heard an argument about why we should prefer square brackets over parentheses (square brackets require no shift while parentheses do). FWIW, I switch parens and square brackets for exactly that reason. It'd be great if distros offered this as an option, but I know my way around xkb enough to do this much.
      • bufordsharkley 11y ago
        I'm an outlier-- I hate chording so much that I use Caps Lock instead of the Shift key. (I'm in the company of the world's fastest typer...) I haven't gone so far as to hack the system to allow Caps Lock to enable the colon and other punctuation, but I've long considered it. ...So for me, two periods is a million times better than a colon.
        • bufordsharkley 11y ago
          I get downvoted every time I mention this, but I'll live with it-- I want to recruit people to typing with caps lock (especially vim users, already used to modal typing).
    • kuschku 11y ago
      On /some/ keyboard layouts that may be true, but remember, on different layouts, you get different results. On German layout, for example, `:` is on `Shift` + `.` – and therefore just as easy to use as `.` (Sorry for the formatting, but this damn page doesn’t have any useful formatting syntax, or escaping. If you want to enjoy the formatting properly, just use a userscript to run a markdown parser over this page).
  • vacri 11y ago
    If your timing is extremely precise, it can save keystrokes... :)