Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
It's inherited from a historic convention from the UK. Historically the rationale was that the month was more important than the year, so they put it first, although this has no useful consistency or order to it.
Unfortunately, kind of dumb decisions from the past tend to stick and keep existing for an unnecessary long time because people get used to them and then never change them. Popularity or habit can beat reason, objectivity etc...
I wish that myth would die. If that was the case then E and R would be furthER away from each othER because being right next to each othER would make it likely for the two lettERs to bump into each othER.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY
Thanks, didn't know. It's indeed a well-established myth then. Corrected my post.
Interesting. Thanks! I genuinely believed that myth was true.
The QWERTY keyboard was designed to speed typing up, not slow it down
sauce?
Here's just one, and there are many. What you cited above doesn't contradict what I said either...my point is it wasn't created to intentionally slow typing down
that just says there's no evidence for the apocryphal theory of it slowing typing down, not what you said about speeding it up. plus "slows it down" is a corruption of the original apocryphal idea that it speeds up typewriting by preventing jams due to neighboring keys being pressed
That's an apocryphal explanation for QWERTY's design. I personally doubt it since "a" and "s" are placed right next to each other. Additionally, placing keys further apart doesn't mean they're slower to type. (In fact, anecdotally, it can be the opposite. In piano, incorrect fingering disproportionately affects playing keys that are right next to each other.)
Damn you're right. In many respects, habit overcomes reason.
That seems to suggest that the American style is a preservation of the older English format, much like we kept spelling of some words like the original English at colonization while the UK gradually changed with other influences around them.