Are you Left or Right handed? Which hand wins in this community?

  • Left handed
  • Right handed

0 voters

In light of recent community interest surrounding which hands are used as the primary source of data entry input I’d like to open this poll to discover which hand dominates this community. Left handers be sure to vote as I think you may be outnumbered!

If you are left handed, perhaps share with us any handy tips or products you find help navigate such a right-hand-centric world. Do you find boards like the Southpaw helpful?

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It depends on whether I’m feeding myself or if it’s a lonely Friday night.

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As a left handed person, the best tip I have for navigating things is just get used to it.

I have had to learn to use my right hand in many things in life. As a basketball player, I was only taught to shoot with my right hand. I swing a golf club and baseball bat righty. I play guitar and bass righty, but this means I get to use my dominant hand to fret, so I’ve never understood just how this is playing righty, but whatever.
I mouse with my right hand.

I honestly have no problems with normal keyboard layouts and couldn’t stomach South paw layouts just from the aesthetic perspective. My layout of choice - HHKB - is a super right hand dominant layout if you think about it, but, to me, keyboards are pretty neutral in terms of hands because at least both are engaged.

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I just realized I forgot about ambidextrous, so let’s just go with that?

I’m right-handed person but, for data inputs, I think I use my left hand more. So I guess I will vote for left hand.

here is the current setup:

EDIT: oops, I forgot: Fn + Space = Enter :grin:

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Interesting. Would you say that you feel pretty comfortable using both hands for intricate tasks?

I wonder if left handers are inherently more ambidextrous due to having to adapt so often. As a right handed myself I just take it for granted that things like the return key are on the right hand side.

This is a cool layout, do you hold function with your left thumb then?

yes, my left thumb will hit Space or Fn.

Mix of both but not ambidextrous.

I mean, pretty much every PC gamer is a lefty in regards to keyboard usage, since righthand is on mouse, left hand is on WASD. The main purpose of southpaw layouts is to make it easier for the lefthand to do things like Numpad input in order to be able to use their righthand to click on datafields for ultrafast spreadsheet updating.

Hmm. Most lefties that I know do have a decent amount of dexterity in their right hand too.

Could just be the people I know though. My right hand got a lot of use because I’ve fractured every finger and both wrists at different points from sports injuries or fights as a kid. At a certain point, teachers stopped giving me a scribe when my left hand was messed up and said to learn how to use my right. Forced ambidexterity.

Leftie here, but using the left pretty much only for writing, most other tasks with my right hand…since nearly all tools are manufactured for backward peo…right handed people. :slight_smile:

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Ambidextrous, by favor my right side after a mild broken left arm freshman year of high school. Though almost have par dominance since then.

I voted for right handed since that is my dominant hand, but I am very ambidextrous & would’ve loved to see an option for that. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

It was too late to change the poll by the time I realized I had forgotten that option but thanks for chiming in!

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I am LH and I personally don’t find things like the Southpaw helpful since my muscle memory has already grown accustomed to me inputting numbers with my right hand (since I got into this hobby when I was already almost entering adulthood). When it comes to scissors and cutting, I usually just have someone else do it for me or cry :smiley:. I hated school desks growing up as well as spiraled notebooks LOL but otherwise just learned to live with it as I never found right-handed centric things to be entirely devastating.

I think another interesting topic I’ve found floating around is how your dominant handed-ness correlates to what hand you press your spacebar with, which shift key you use, etc.

I exclusively use right shift and space with my left thumb which from what I have gathered appears to be common mostly for LH people.

Another food for thought: I did try to learn Dvorak for a couple months and was able to hit around 90 WPM at my peak. But it has me wondering, since QWERTY is fairly left hand dominant if it is worth the switch for me as I am significantly more dexterous with my LH than I am with my RH

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Dude, yes. The freaking spiral notebooks or really any notebook with a spine. Most frustrating thing to write in. Then lifting up your hand to see smudges across your page and on your hand. And school desk chair combos that only give support for the right arm.

Echo the muscle memory thing for right handed devices.

Weirdly, I exclusively use my right thumb for space and left shift more often.

I’m not sure that brain is understood well enough when it comes to difference between left and right handed people.

I fell off a bicycle when I was in ground school and broke my right arm, which is my primary arm. I had to learn how to do most important things with my left arm (jerking off).

Those things I forced myself to do with my left arm became lifelong habit instead of just temporary solution. I literally reprogramed my brain and I can’t possibly imagine doing those things now with my right arm, although I still use it for writing.

So… this presents some interesting questions. Maybe we’re not actually better at doing someting with this or that side, it’s actually brain providing first suggestion to use that hand and then throughout years of use and practice, you think you’re better in using that side, when in fact, you would be just as good using the other.

I’m right handed but I’m fooling around with my left doing more dominant hand tasks like using spacebar with left thumb which I don’t conventionally do. Also learning touch typing left hand alone

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