Left mostly due to gaming and mouse usage. Right does see some usage though. For example: when I don't have two hands on the keyboard; for Shift + Enter and Shift + Delete. It's a shame that Whatpulse can't tell the difference between left and right otherwise I would post the counts for both.<p>As an aside, it doesn't even recognise my shift key so I wrote a little utility to read its key frequencies file and print the data to the console. That tells me:<p>> Key 0x10: Shift, count 53170
This was a more interesting question than I thought at first. I looked at my keyboard, and I see equal wear on both keys. I tried typing the first sentence using Title Case, and I find that I use the pinky of the opposite hand that's typing to make capital letters. I've never thought the right shift key is "far away" at all.
I was going to say that I prefer the left shift key... but while writing this comment, I realized I'm using the right shift key.<p>(I'm right-handed and anchor my right pinky on the shift key. Somewhere, a typing tutor screams in horror. I use the left control key exclusively.)
If you type properly using both your hands, you should use both of them almost equally. That's what I do. Use the left shift key for keys pressed by your right hands, and right shift key for keys pressed by your left.