[newtwilly]

No it's not a degradation. It puts Ctrl in a sane place much easier to reach with your pinky. And if you really were going to use your thumb on the left control, then it's about the same distance to the Caps Lock key. I'm replying to the original asker with my advice, if you want to read more about what I think :)

[BeetleB]

> It puts Ctrl in a sane place much easier to reach with your pinky.

That it does, but there's no good reason I should use my pinky to hit Ctrl to begin with.

[gjvc]

Your reasoning is most bizarre.

By that rationale, there's no good reason I should use my (left) forefinger to press "g" to begin with.

(qwerty layout assumed...)