
Ask HN: Does anyone else press keys in wrong order for certain words everytime? - rahulskn86
For me, whenever I need to type `length`, I would always type `lenght` first and then correct it. Is there a way to get rid of this annoying habit?
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rgoulter
One suggestion: rather than just retyping the 'th', retype the whole word
'length'.

Steve Yegge's advice for learning 'licks' was "go fast; go slow; go target
pace". [https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-
dirtie...](https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-
little-secret.html)

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combatentropy
I had always thought I do this because some other word that I type a lot has
the letters in that order. For example, you say you keep typing _lenght_.
Well, once you fix that, will you start typing _ligth_ instead of _light_? (Or
any of the many words that are _ght_. It's a common combination in English.)

~~~
rococode
Wow, that's an interesting hypothesis! I just pulled up a random wordlist on
GitHub (370k words) [1]. Searching it in a text editor, "ght" appears 1621
times and "gth" only appears 77 times! So perhaps habitual mistakes like these
really are caused by the higher frequency of a different ordering of the same
letters.

[1] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dwyl/english-
words/master/...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dwyl/english-
words/master/words_alpha.txt)

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walkersutton
[https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/sl](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/sl)

whenever you mistype ‘ls’ as ‘sl’, you can have a steam locomotive run across
your terminal with the above installed

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sapientiae3
I’m convinced this is a result of typing on a keyboard - it seldom happens
when I’m writing _.

I think that after a typing for a while, your brain tries to introduce some
optimization, i.e. while your one finger goes for the letter ‘t’ (my left
hand), your brain queues up the letter ‘h’ for another finger on your other
hand. Quite often, and possibly because I’m right hand dominant, the hand
going for the letter ‘h’ gets there first. It usually happens with the same
pairs of letters.

It would not surprise me if keyboards have introduced whole new kinds of
dyslexia.

_ I have noticed this has crept into my writing occasionally - if I have been
typing a lot - usually with the same pairs of letters. I will write the second
one first, and then go back and insert the first one.

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Storm_Dulin
I've noticed this a lot at my work and have narrowed down several common
letter swaps to my system prioritizing one letter going first when both keys
are hit at the same time. The one I run into most often is r coming before o
when both are hit but it also happens with i before e or, in the instance you
have noticed, g before h.

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allears
Does anyone else run two words together to make one word even though it's
wrong, everytime?

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oblib
I tend to spell the word I'm wanting to type wrong the same a lot. For
example, I'll type "that" when I want to type "than".

It's an annoying habit.

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slipwalker
yes, gti instead git... i even kept an

    
    
        alias gti=git

for a week, before turning into

    
    
        alias g=git

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buboard
a good , fluid mechanical keyboard makes one more accurate. anything deviating
from perfection will introduce errors though.

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quickthrower2
I still type badly after years of practice and trying to touch type. I just
hit wrong keys quite often! I’ve quit caring.

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zzo38computer
Not always, I think. But maybe there are some where it is common to me,
although I do not remember, so I don't know.

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mcswell
"langauge". And I'm a linguist, so I type this word a lot...

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bloodorange
Practice typing. There is no other way. You just have an issue with accuracy
and need to fix it.

In the case you mentioned, if you note, it's a case of the right hand hitting
'h' before the left is done hitting the t. Just practice typing for a bit
everyday and these kind of errors will go away.

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mike-cardwell
I type "grpe" instead of "grep" all the time.

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jitendrac
yes,I frequently make typo while typing word ending with -re,to -er. I know
the spelling. Still I make those errors and then correct those errors
immediately.

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happyrock
I type `git pupll` an awful lot. No idea why.

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mxyzpt1k
alias gerp=grep

For just that reason

