What is the longest word you can type with only the left hand? The right hand? Also, does anyone know how the letters were arranged on the keyboard?
I’ve often heard “databases” is the longest word that can be typed with the left hand, but I suspect there are more obscure words that are longer.
Here’s The Master’s article about the history of the QWERTY keyboard.
There is at least one classic counterexample, unless you count “stewardesses” as more obscure than “databases” (12 letters versus 9).
I used both hands to type those words, because my keyboard layout is Dvorak. It’s mighty hard to type anything on Dvorak using only one hand, due to the placement of vowels on the left side of the keyboard.
The longest word I can type with my left hand is “jipijapa” (a palm-like plant used to make Panama hats).
The longest word I can type with my right hand is “crwth” (an archaic stringed musical instrument).
The longest words using letters from the top row are “fly”, “ply”, and “cry”.
The longest word using letters from the home row is the 19-letter “instantaneousness”.
I can’t type any word using the bottom row only, unless you count abbreviations like “mm” and “km”.
(FTR, all the above were discovered by grepping regular expressions from /usr/share/dict/words. YMMV.)
“I”, “N”, “T”, “E”, “O”, “U” are not on the home row.
Maybe not for you, but they are for me.
It’s been said that the longest word that can be typed using only the top row of letters on the QWERTY layout is… “typewriter”. Does anyone know if this is true? Is there a longer word with this property? (I hope not - “typewriter” has a certain appropriateness.)
One further curiosity: the longest word which can be typed with alternating hands is “phenomenological” (16 letters). If we stipulate that one has to start with the right hand, then you have the choice among the 14-letter “deliberatively”, “deliverability”, “misalphabetise”, “rehabilitative”, “sulphanilamide”, “symptomatology”, and “verisimilitude”.
I couldn’t find a longer one, but I also found the following ones of equal length: “perpetuity”, “proprietor”, “repertoire”.
I just typed pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis using only my left hand. 
And I type only with my right index finger (a bad habit I learned about 50 years ago, but since I type reasonably fast with one finger, I’ve never bothered to learn the correct way).
Thanks, I had never heard of Dvorak before, and assumed those were the first 6 letters on the top row. Whoops!
Looks like the Dvorak layout is useful for more than just typing fast, however:
Regexp, *nix and Dvorak? Let me guess, you’re also fluent in Esperanto.
With only my left hand?
Does “morejpegsplzthankyoutakeoffyourshirtnow” count?
I started a thread yesterday asking a legit question and it was locked because people said I could’ve used google to find my answer. Well, I just googled your question and found the answer in the second link. Yet this thread remains open. Odd.
I locked your thread yesterday to stop the bickering, not because it could be answered by using Google.
samclem GQ moderator
I never learned the “proper” way to touch type, but after having it explained to me I firmly believe that it is fundamentally retarded. Using one finger per key is ridiculous and sounds like it is just asking for a repetitive stress injury.
The longest word I can type with any subset of my fingers from 1 to 10 is the longest word I am willing to type. For example this entire message up until now has been written with just my left hand at probably about 40 WPM (Just a guess).
However switching to just using my right hand I can type faster and almost without looking at the keyboard. The basic principle I use when typing QWERTY (I didn’t really get the hang of DVORAK because I started off on DVORAK using a blank keyboard and it didn’t work out that well), is for the next key I use “the closest available finger at a convinient angle”. So typing numbering fingers 1 for left pinky, 5 for left thumb, 6 for right thumb and 10 for right pinky I will type the following words as follows (with a certain degree of probability, it’s not consistent typing to typing and if I have a cut I can’t let that slow down my typing speed just because one finger is out of comission):
“Jingle bells”: 7,8,7,7,9,3,7,3,9,9,2
“Debauchery”: 4,3,4,2,7,4,7,3,4,4
etc.
But that’s just the way I learned. I had to type fast and I wouldn’t let anybody teach me the mind numbing home row system. The fastest typist I have ever seen did not use fixed ‘home position’ nor did they pay attention to the rows. If I pay attention to how I type I think I mostly stay on the top row with my middle and ring fingers wiht my index fingers (if extended) at a roughly 110 degree angle.
For reference I type English at about 80-85WPM full speed (net) and only get tired after a dozen or so pages if I don’t take breaks.
Right hand only on QWERTY: monopoly
You must have pretty small fingers. I can manage to push down the key using only one finger, using two or more is fairly difficult.