Use Your Keyboard to Strengthen Your Weaker Hand

Being left-handed, I have often noticed that my right hand is much weaker than the left, and it seems that the older I get, the worse the problem becomes.

Not long ago it occurred to me that I could remedy the problem by coming up with a list of words that only used the right hand keyboard letters, and, by practicing writing them for a short time each day I might be able to increase the strength in my right hand so that both hands would be equal. Using real words rather than just a list of unrelated letters made the project a little more interesting and the typing a whole lot easier.

Now, after only a few weeks of my 10-minute a day morning ritual, I can honestly say that, although I am still definitely left-handed, my right hand is much stronger than it was, and I make fewer mistakes with that hand than I did before.

So, being one of the world's greatest procrastinator's, I also decided to work out a list for right-handed people using only words that would be typed with the left hand so right handers could reap similar benefits.

After that, I decided to make it even more interesting and turn the words into sentences, or even short stories, but found it to be much more difficult than I had expected it to be, especially when attempting to form sentences using only the keyboard letters typed by the right hand. Fifteen letters are typed by the left hand and only 11 by the right hand---something I had never noticed before. The result was, that after I did my first 10 sentences for the left hand, I decided to stick with the words only for the right hand list.

Since more people are dominantly right-handed rather than left-handed, my list of words for strengthening your left hand appears first below followed by ten sample sentences using the same words.

Following that list is the list of words for left-handers who wish to increase their right hand strength, but I will leave it up to you to find some sentences using those words. Consider it your challenge for the week, and let me know how it turns out.

Words for left hand practice using only the letters:

Q, W, E, R, T, A, S, D, F, G, Z, X, C, V, B

base, beret, barber, best, beware, beaver, brave, baggage

cat, cede, create, cage, carve, carefree, crafts, creed

dessert, desert, deaf, debate, deserve, database, draft, dread

feed, fed, few, fate, fast, fretted, faster, fax, fat, fetter, facts

great, gaze, gate, greeted, gave, grabbed, grace, garbage

sate, straw, saw, stars, strewed, staged, sews, sat

vase, vex, veer, verge, vast, verse, verb, vest, verbage

were, was, wades, west, waxes, waft, wears, weaver, water

Sentences for left hand practice. (Punctuation may require occasional use of right hand.)

1. A barber wears a red beret.

2. A deaf cat ate a fat rat.

3. Beavers eat grass.

4. Garbage was strewed at a gate.

5. A brave bear ate garbage.

6. Carefree cats ate dessert.

7. Sad cats grabbed dead rats.

8. A few verses were created.

9. We gazed west at a great star.

10. Water raced fast as a carefree bear fed.

Words for right hand practice using only the letters:

H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, U, Y

hip, hoop, hum, hump, hill,

ill, ilk, imp, ion, imply

joy, junk, jump, jolly, jumpy, join

kill, kiln, kilo, kilt, kin

lion, lumpy lull, lip, limp, loin

million, monk, monopoly, moon, mop

nymph, null, noun, nippy, nut, nook

onion, only, oily, opinion, oomph

pin, pony, pool, ploy, pill, pink, pull,

plum, plump, poppy, pulp, pumpkin

union, unholy, unhook, unpin, upon

you, yolk, yo-yo, you'll, yummy