[autocorr]

Like other folks have said in this thread, there is no one size fits all solution to RSI and I would encourage anyone to seek out physical therapy first (or even just start doing strength training, like dead lifts).

As someone with a crazy ergo split keyboard though, I also share the author's intuition: floating the palms and hands allows for straight wrists, and bent wrists are probably the biggest culprit of typing related RSI. Floating the hands like playing the piano makes "proper" typing difficult though, because it incorporates significant arm movement.

So my conclusion after going down the rabbit hole on ergo keyboards is that... they probably don't matter too much (it's not like we have any data anyway). It seems likely most people can accommodate standard hardware in an ergonomic way by using a non-standard typing style: arms coming in at angle with straight and non-deviated wrists, hovering hands but without wrist flexion, and avoiding finger excessive finger extension using supplemental movement from arms. This would be compared to using non-standard hardware like a Kinesis Advantage or Dactyl-Manuform with standard or "proper finger movement only" typing style.

But to the defense of ergo keyboards, I think the above are not mutually exclusive. A sane physical layout reduces the amount of arm coordination required and a split design seems to have really helped improve the mobility in my shoulders, neck, and back along with general posture.