Keyboards, Left-handedness,

I mentioned recently that I would comment on the frequency of keys typed on my laptop (that was pretty much the whole post, so why bother linking?) and there is a little bit of a story too it, but be forewarned, it's not a very good one.

Regularly I use a whiteboard to do my linguistic analysis, or for whatever things I need to be accomplishing that day, I find it to be a great way to help my thinking and work with data. So much so that I carry a smaller board and markers around with me (not everywhere, or course) but for when I might wind up sitting someplace for a time or know I will be working. Now, the finer nuances of how white boards work escapes me, but basically, when you wipe away the marker, it has to go somewhere, right?

Well, apparently I use my board enough that little bits get on my fingers and usually it is of no consequence to anyone or anything. After a while though, I noticed that my lovely white keyboard and touch pad are turning greenish, and not just the yellowish that is to be expected from MacBooks that were bought during a certain period of time.

The keys that are turning green are {a, s, e, r, t, h, n, u, i, o} and to a lesser extent {y, l} and where my thumb would sit on the space bar and right shift. Those probably seem to be pretty regularly used letters, and I think they coincide roughly where my hand sit on the keyboard. Something like:

LP - on {a}
LR - on {s}
LM - on {e}
LI - on {r, t}
LT - on space bar, near c/v break

RT - on {n}
RI - on u/i break
RM - on i/o break
RR - on o/p break
RP - on right shift

It's not too surprising that it worked out that way, that's right about where your fingers are supposed to line up. My keyboard looks something like:

QWERTYUIOP
 ASDFGHJKL
  ZXCVBNM

The ergonomic keyboards with the break in the middle always threw me off because I am right handed, but left hand dominant, so (well, I'm not sure if it's causative or not, but) I type much further over with my left hand that is intended, specifically characters {y, h}.

Incidentally, the department I'm in has an unusual amount of left-handed linguists. Less than 10% of the adult population is expected to be left-handed, but it's easily over 20% of faculty, and I don't actually know the orientation of a good number. Weird stuff, eh?