3 ms·

> In my personal experience I found home-row typing to actually be unergonomic mostly because of the additional bend required from moving both hands closer toge

by nickjj 6y ago

> In my personal experience I found home-row typing to actually be unergonomic mostly because of the additional bend required from moving both hands closer together. I've always thought this too. I've been typing a lot since about 1996 and never got into home row typing. It never felt natural or comfortable and I don't have abnormally sized hands either. It just felt like going against the system. I don't want to jinx myself but over the decades I've experienced no pain or issues with any joints or muscles but I've always made sure no matter what desk I used my forearms were parallel to the floor and my wrists were effortlessly resting in front of the keyboard. I think this aspect cannot be ignored, especially for long sessions. Then for typing style I mainly move my hands around while I type with my all of my fingers except pinky fingers. Where like 80% of typing is done with thumbs, index and middle fingers. Overall I have lots of hand movement and can type without looking for just about all key presses (except some combos) at about 70-75 wpm with good accuracy. Based on his video, my hands move probably 2x more from side to side but the overall style is kind of similar. It's also similar in the sense that my right hand moves more than my left.

robotmay 6y ago
The thing that always confused me about home-row typing is that it seems oddly hard to hit Enter. My only guess to that is that it works better with an ANSI keyboard than with an ISO keyboard. I also found I type rarely with my pinkies, and in fact I do pretty much only use them for Ctrl + Shift. Using the Shift on the opposite hand from the target key most of the time took some practice but I think lends itself well to not having to over-stretch the pinkies :)
- hinkley 6y ago
  I wonder if the lot of us should compare notes. Say I put my fingers on the home row, and don't think about them, relax. When everything is settled, I lock my fingers, pick my hands up, flip them over and look at my finger tips and base knuckles, the tips are at about a 25° angle. There is no 'bunching up'. Hitting the enter key: 2 options for me. 1) pick my whole hand up, shift it over about one key, twist my wrist a couple of degrees, and then drop my hand vertically to hit enter. 2) lift my hand very slightly, move it down and to the right from the elbow, as if I'm trying to strike the enter key with the knife-edge of my hand, except that the pinky is extended. So my pinky hits the enter key at a 40° angle and slides across it until the click registers. The enter key often comes between thoughts. I doubt I even notice the extra 20 ms it probably takes to hit enter and the next key.
MAGZine 6y ago
this rings true actually. I had a friend who typed with just the three fingers on the right hand while the left hand hovered all of the most essential letters with all five fingers. it seemed to work pretty well to just have one hand hunting around the keyboard. That said, it might making correct shift-usage correct which can negatively affect the other hand. That being said, I have my laptop on my lap right now and if I have one hand on home row, and the other hand just kind of idly floating over the right side of the keyboard, when you go to place the fingers on home row, you can really feel in the wrist and forearm the muscles pulling the hand "outward," in relation to the rest of the arm. This, incidentally, is where a lot of my RSI-type pain has come from. The elbows going out, fore arms craning inwards, and then the wrist pulling to straighten the hands back out is a recipe for pain.

by nickjj 6y ago

robotmay 6y ago

The thing that always confused me about home-row typing is that it seems oddly hard to hit Enter. My only guess to that is that it works better with an ANSI keyboard than with an ISO keyboard. I also found I type rarely with my pinkies, and in fact I do pretty much only use them for Ctrl + Shift. Using the Shift on the opposite hand from the target key most of the time took some practice but I think lends itself well to not having to over-stretch the pinkies :)

hinkley 6y ago
I wonder if the lot of us should compare notes. Say I put my fingers on the home row, and don't think about them, relax. When everything is settled, I lock my fingers, pick my hands up, flip them over and look at my finger tips and base knuckles, the tips are at about a 25° angle. There is no 'bunching up'. Hitting the enter key: 2 options for me. 1) pick my whole hand up, shift it over about one key, twist my wrist a couple of degrees, and then drop my hand vertically to hit enter. 2) lift my hand very slightly, move it down and to the right from the elbow, as if I'm trying to strike the enter key with the knife-edge of my hand, except that the pinky is extended. So my pinky hits the enter key at a 40° angle and slides across it until the click registers. The enter key often comes between thoughts. I doubt I even notice the extra 20 ms it probably takes to hit enter and the next key.

MAGZine 6y ago

this rings true actually. I had a friend who typed with just the three fingers on the right hand while the left hand hovered all of the most essential letters with all five fingers. it seemed to work pretty well to just have one hand hunting around the keyboard. That said, it might making correct shift-usage correct which can negatively affect the other hand. That being said, I have my laptop on my lap right now and if I have one hand on home row, and the other hand just kind of idly floating over the right side of the keyboard, when you go to place the fingers on home row, you can really feel in the wrist and forearm the muscles pulling the hand "outward," in relation to the rest of the arm. This, incidentally, is where a lot of my RSI-type pain has come from. The elbows going out, fore arms craning inwards, and then the wrist pulling to straighten the hands back out is a recipe for pain.