| > the weakest (pinky) finger A lot of keyboard layout enthusiasts (including the linked article) make this claim, but is there any evidence for it? As someone who as trained in various arts that use the hand, I've always been told by all of my teachers that the pinky is the strongest finger. This article rates the first two fingers "very strong" and "strong", while ring and pinky are both "weak", yet a ring/pinky pull-up doesn't seem any more difficult than an index/middle pull-up. Strong enough to lift my body weight, but too weak to press keys on a modern keyboard? I'm skeptical. The most believable answer I've found so far, as to the relative strength of the fingers, is [1], which is a multi-faceted "it depends". There's no standard way to measure strength, and there are many different kinds of strength a finger can exert. How exactly are we defining "finger strength" for typing, and how are we measuring it? [1] https://100hourboard.org/questions/52873/ The Dvorak layout has many advantages (I've been using it for over 25 years myself) but the idea that it's better because it uses your "stronger" fingers is just a canard. |