re: Finding Handedness-Neutral Wording (Left And Right) page 25

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.

Or calcium carbide from bicycle lamps.

Charles Riggs filted:

The tenth grade for me. The young blonde instructor was so good looking and had such great ***, I spent ... is the right word. I type good today, though. Good, good, good. She gave me an A+, God bless her.

As well she should have...you're not supposed to look at the keys when you type, so your baser instincts were doing you a favor..r

Peter H.M. Brooks filted:

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'thinko', but the point is that the size of the corpus callosum ... is concerned, left-handed man have larger cc's than right handed ones. Handedness makes no difference (in this study) between women.

Leaving aside the apostrophe as a regional matter, is it proper to use an appended "s" to form the plural of "corpus callosum", given that (1) the noun precedes the adjective, and (2) the spelled-out plural of the phrase contains fewer of that letter than the singular?...r

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"

I was simply thinking of the fact that German for "sorry" is a longer word. They seem to have unusually long words for many common things.

Rod.

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'thinko', but ... CC. In women, sex is the relevant factor, not handedness.

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

I haven't watched plebvision since 1982, and I know that it was pretty crap then, but it sounds as if it has got even worse if you think that funny.

Secretly I have always held the opinion that it would be less depressing to be alcoholic than to be anonymous- Quinten Crisp, Resident Alien * TagZilla 0.057 * http://tagzilla.mozdev.org

Thank you. I'm relatively new here and still trying to pick up on the local culture, but I take a ... males, is relatively homogeneous as to sex, if the word is used as the equivalent of PC "gender". CDB

I understood the confusion, the writers of the abstract were clumsy. I certainly don't misuse the word 'gender' as you describe, as you say, the proper word is indeed 'sex'.
What they meant was that sex was the distinguishing factor - you're right that it sounded as if they were claiming that males varied in sex, a nonsense.

Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things. J.S.Mill Chapter II, Utilitarianism
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Pure letter frequency is a little simplistic. ETA, the most ... 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 ... left hand has q, w, z and x, but they're mostly on the less used fingers, unlike j and k.

Yes. The claim is that the Dvorak keyboard works better even than qwerty used by left-handers. The Dvorak is designed to use both hands evenly and to set up a fairly steady flow alternating between the hands. From the way I type, I'd see this as a deterioration as my right hand would have to work a lot harder and it is less effective than my left.

Some day, when I'm really bored, I might teach myself Dvorak and test this theory.

When people ask me what I've got against pictures, I can only reply, 'What have you got against the well'- Quinten Crisp, Resident Alien

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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.

I never mastered it, though. My handwriting has always been awful, and is now worse than ever. I can produce something vaguely acceptable with a fountain pen, but my writing with a biro has neither character nor style.

I wish it were not so.
Katy

If we're talking about those chairs with a sort of ... still much more uncomfortable than a proper desk or table.

For a right-hander to wind up with a lefty is not as bad as for a left-hander to wind up with a righty, don't you agree?

In many cases you can switch the arms over, thus converting a right to a left or vice versa. I've noticed that left-handers are much more likely to have realised this than right handers, who are often surprised when they see a left hander making the adjustment.

Chris Malcolm (Email Removed) +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205 IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK (http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/)