The Atlantic Monthly on how to properly use knives in the kitchen.
The first element to avoiding your blade is keeping it in your hand. As Fleisher's Aaron Lenz describes it, you should hold your knife like the butt of a pistol, fingers wrapped tightly around the grip "like someone was trying to take it away from you." Some people hold a boning knife like a conductor's baton during a particularly slow part of Pachelbel's Canon. This is wrong. You will either drop your knife through your fingers, causing you to cut your knife hand with your knife, or, more likely, lose track of it in your brain's motor control center and cut the hand holding the meat.
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