re: Finding Handedness-Neutral Wording (Left And Right) page 24

In my case it was a filler something to do in the first half of my Senior year. The only reason I was still in high school was for Civics a requirement for graduation, so I took trigonometry and typing as fillers. I graduated with a scholarship in mid-year.

Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/

Robin Bignall filted:

Cross-threading slightly, the men's men would have it that apologising ... "KILL" instead, all on the right-hand side of the keyboard.

And "CASTRATE" is all on the left...coincidence?...r

Maybe the inventor had a qwerty sense of humour.

wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire, England

The areas of the rostrum and posterior body of ... could "sex" there be a thinko for "left-handedness"? CDB

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'thinko', but the point is that the size of the corpus callosum ... handedness and sex are related to the size of the CC. In women, sex is the relevant factor, not handedness.

You have a great future in penning routines for TV comics.

We had to do the same (UK primary school, 1950s). The girls with plaits used to get their hair dipped in the inkwells regularly.

I had plaits in them thar days ...

So did we, in a UK primary school from the mid-1940s. But we weren't allowed to graduate from pencils to stick pens and ink until the equivalent of American third grade, about eight years old. We were taught Round Hand in the Marion Richardson style.

That's not a million miles from my handwriting today. I went a bit more italic during my more pretentious teens.
(aue only)

Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @

The areas of the rostrum and posterior body of ... could "sex" there be a thinko for "left-handedness"? CDB

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'thinko', but the point is that the size of the corpus callosum differs between people depending on either their handedness or their sex. It is put a bit clumsily, I know.

Thank you. I'm relatively new here and still trying to pick up on the local culture, but I take a thinko to be like a typo, except that the slip is in the brain not the fingers (one also sees "fingo", but not in my posts, since I still haven't figured out the distinction). My puzzlement, of course, arose from the fact that the group referred to, males, is relatively homogeneous as to sex, if the word is used as the equivalent of PC "gender". CDB

I had plaits in them thar days ...

So did we, in a UK primary school from the ... We were taught Round Hand in the Marion Richardson style.

That's not a million miles from my handwriting today. I went a bit more italic during my more pretentious teens. (aue only)

We were taught Marion Richardson at primary school. At grammar school we were taught a very impressive italic style - I expect Katy E will remember. When we moved house and I changed schools I was teased about my fancy handwriting so I changed it a bit but it remained very legible for many years. My mother, when castigating me for my current illegible scrawl, likes to remind me that I won prizes for my handwriting when I was young.
I changed my handwriting when I went to university and abandoned fountain pens completely but I later went to calligraphy evening classes to try to return to proper italics. It took too long, though, and I could never find a really comfortable pen. The real deterioration set in when I had problems with my joints - writing became painful and typing was easier. I don't have the problems any more but I'm left with very bad handwriting - and many pens, none of which are quite right.

Laura
(emulate St. George for email)

We had to do the same (UK primary school, 1950s). The girls with plaits used to get their hair dipped in the inkwells regularly.

Oh dear. That brought back some guilty memories. Of course, it wasn't always possible because frequently the inkwell had been stuffed with bits of blotting paper or chalk.

Rob Bannister

Pure letter frequency is a little simplistic. ETA, the most frequent letters, are on the left, they account for more ... be used for the next letter at the very least, a further 11% (actually higher), magnifying the left-handed advantage further.

I'm glad you pointed that out. I remember, as a child, memorising a letter frequency alphabet, but I was sure in my own mind that I used my left hand more frequently than the right in typing. I'm pleased you were able to confirm my belief.
I suppose there a lot of words that have the ious combination, but they are mainly long, more bookish words, while j, k, h, p are far rarer - just look at their Scrabble scores. True, the left hand has q, w, z and x, but they're mostly on the less used fingers, unlike j and k.

Rob Bannister

The strange part is that on a Qwerty keyboard the ... type, or at least I have to think about them.

Just say "sorry" instead, and be thankful you're not German. :-)

Entschuldigung! Or would you prefer Verzeihung? Both of these are less likely to tie my fingers in knots that "apology" (even though I'm getting better at it). "People" is another one, plus any other word that has o and l or p in it close together.

Rob Bannister