The real problem with current keyboards is the physical arrangement of the keys. Staggered rows instead of columns make them less ergonomic, the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard. The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text. While the weak pinky finger has to cover more keys than the others. These things are more significant than qwerty vs dvorak.
Need to type faster? Spend some time practising every day and you will gain more speed within weeks than from just switching layouts. Most people don't as speed often isn't actually that important. I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed. Need less hand movement? Placing symbols, arrow keys etc as secondary function onto the central keys with a programmable keyboard helps with that, changing to dvorak doesn't as much because on a modern keyboard you can reach all letters without hand movement either way.
I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed.
If you ever have a thought that you want to put into words but need to wait for your fingers, you are being bottlenecked by your typing. Most people think and speak faster than they can type, especially in short bursts; and I'm saying that, as someone who can comfortably type at ~160-180wpm and burst over 200 for a few seconds at a time, I still find myself waiting for my fingers. Holding a conversation over IM is one of the most common places where this bottleneck becomes very noticeable.
> If you ever have a thought that you want to put into words but need to wait for your fingers
I'm not sure, I don't think that happens a lot to me, especially because I speak and type in multiple languages. I as well, feel bottlenecked by the brain, not typing speed. Even when I use voice-to-text software, I struggle to speak out loud my thoughts in a well-structured and well-paced manner, which somehow doesn't happen during normal conversations, only when I'm trying to write my thoughts down.
That being said, as someone who keeps their hands on the keyboard a dozen hours a day, of course I would love to find a way to type much, much faster and more accurately. I bet it comes in very handy when taking notes during Zoom meetings, etc., but my vim-muscle memory freaks out even thinking of having to rebind hjkl keys to something else. I wonder if vimmers who switched to Dvorak or Colemak can share their perspective. I've never gotten brave enough to give them a try, always felt like a waste of time for questionable benefit, but that's probably how most people think about vim-navigation, which has become an inextricable part of my keyboard workflow and I am very grateful for my younger self for learning vim-navigation.
That key makes up about 15% in English text, and it could be covered by 10% of fingers but instead it's 20%. Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys. Altough I haven't looked at actual keypress stats and how those are distributed across fingers. Might be interesting to look into.
On my keyboard I cover six keys with my two thumbs. It eliminates almost all hand movement and guess what, I feel a difference in my pinky fingers but not in the thumbs. I'm not saying every keyboard should be like this, but I think on a large scale you can probably improve wirst and hand health in the population by making a few small tweaks in how keys are arranged.
> Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys.
As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory. It's like a novice golfer complaining that it hurts their hips when they rotate through the swing, or a tennis player complaining that trying to add spin with a wrist twist feels weird, or any millions of other example of "feels weird without practice". Hell, most people can't do the most basic of yoga poses without practice. Muscles need to be stretched and trained into doing what you want them to do. Once they are, all of the complaints go away and things feel normal.
Is QWERTY the most efficient, no. But as someone else commented, speed is not my issue. Thinking what needs to be typed is definitely my speed regulator. If I were to just do basic text dictation or re-typing while reading a direct source, my speeds increase dramatically.
I find that most typing complaints are from those that never had formal typing instruction and are self taught with games or similar. I was fortunate to have one full year of typing while in high school, and it is by far the most used class instruction I've ever had.
Nah dawg. I was a practiced touch typist for years. We had oodles of typing in elementary school. Pain in my pinkies didn't get better. Only worse because keys like {}| are far more important in programming than writing English and add to pinkie stress. Switching to a Kinesis Advantage with thumb keys and layers to put keys like {} under better fingers resolved my problem.
> As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory.
Becoming a good typist doesn't magically change your pinkie from being the weakest finger on your hand to the strongest. That's basic anatomy. And, specifically if you are a good typist, then your neutral hand position will absolutely involve stretching your pinkie to hit enter/backspace/shift - they're exactly wrong with their assertion.
I'm vaguely aware of the Kinesis Advantage - it looks like a pretty solid ergonomic keyboard (although it may not be for me because it's not a split keyboard and my shoulders are pretty wide). Does the software do QMK stuff like mod-tap?
Yes, firmware on the Advantage 2 (what I have) does allow some QMK type stuff like mod-tap. They call it "tap and hold". It's more limited than QMK from my understanding (e.g., only 1 layer, tap and hold only on certain keys) but for my uses cases it's been fine.
While it's not a true split, the key wells are ~6" apart which is plenty IMO. They do have the similar Advantage 360 Professional which is a true split and uses ZMK for more programmability.
I think having Shift available for the thumb would help a lot (in the middle just below Space bar).
Most experimental layouts that add more features make the mistake to overload it, some of these things even look totally thumb-driven.... This make everything very confusing. Just Shift for a start, would be good. The pinky is too much overloaded. Offloading some of it to the thumb would actually be an improvement.
The stagger is beneficial for the right hand but makes it harder for the left hand. An ortholinear layout is not more comfortable, ideally there should either be a symmetrical or columnar stagger.
I still miss a Compaq keyboard I had with a split spacebar. You could choose various options; I had the left side as backspace.
I don't agree with your statement about switching though. I was a very good Qwerty typist, but I'm much faster and more accurate on Dvorak. Switching was one of the most useful things I have ever done.
I switched to Dvorak around five years ago now. I decided to switch at the same time as switching to a columnar split keyboard (specifically the ZSA Moonlander, which is still my primary keyboard (my secondary is the ZSA Voyager for travel)). I did this switch at the same time, because I felt like it would be a sufficiently different keyboard that I wouldn't have as concrete of muscle memory, and I wouldn't be fighting my QWERTY instincts as much.
A big part of why I wanted to make the switch at all is because I was experiencing fatigue in my hands, and I felt that it could be due to my improper typing habits that I developed from mostly learning to type through playing videogames. I wanted to properly type from the home row, and the split columnar keyboard basically enforces that, and Dvorak makes it even easier.
I will say though, I type at about the same speed that I did before I made the switch. Switching layouts almost certainly will not enable you to type faster. Switching layouts encourages you to deliberately practice typing on that layout (I did lots of typing challenges while learning) which will make you faster. The biggest benefit for me has actually been in my back! The split keyboard allows me to rotate my shoulders back a lot more, which makes me feel way better at the end of the day. My hands are less fatigued too, but I don't feel like that was as big of a deal for me.
I also do not agree with TFA that the keyboard layout does not really matter.
I have switched a few years ago to Dvorak. I do not think that this has changed much my typing speed, which has never been important for me. However, it has greatly increased my typing comfort.
Now I consider that switching to Dvorak was one of my best decisions and I only regret that I have spent decades using Qwerty without trying alternatives.
Of course, using an ergonomic keyboard is at least as important as the key layout.
Same for me. I’ve got a Voyager as my main keyboard and I use Colemak. I didn’t have any fatigue or anything, I was just curious what all the hype with alternative layouts was about.
I’m about the same speed as I was on qwerty, but my back and shoulders feel a lot better with the split keyboard. It feels really good to type with an alternative layout, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, the learning process was pretty arduous for me, and I’ve kind of lost my ability to use qwerty.
I would definitely recommend a split keyboard though. The ergonomics are much better.
The much reduced hand movement is extremely comfortable, paying dividends every day. And it fixed my RSI.
Of course over long periods of time we're bottlenecked by our brains. But the things to write come in bursts, and typing speed blocks there. Also transcribing what someone is saying, needs high speed.
My experience completely contradicts your assertions.
> the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard
This is what puzzles me most of the mechanical keyboard market: you can have whatever shit cramped in on a 60%/75% keyboard but the spacebar is still the long slab.
Eg: Shurikey Hanzo 001 65% is especially... bold in this
What puzzles me about the mechanical keyboard market is why they go for the small keyboards to begin with. I can't imagine anyone has a desk so small that the handful of inches shaved off really makes a difference. So why subject oneself to having to relearn all the muscle memory, and the lack of useful keys? It makes no sense to me.
The “missing” keys are on additional layers reached via a modifier key, or by overloading keys on tap/hold, or by increasingly esoteric methods the smaller the board gets: chording, tap dance, etc. They’re typically no less accessible than capital letters, while allowing you to keep your fingers on the home row.
For me, the additional keys on my larger keyboards rarely prove useful in practice. I end up mostly using the same subset available on the 60% I’m typing on now – it’s quicker and more comfortable than reaching over to the dedicated key.
On the other hand there is spatial memory. Overloading things has some downsides - it adds more possibilities for errors - and makes muscle memory complicated.
In a lot of software those extra function keys are well used, easily go into muscle memory and help to safe a lot of time.
Less things to connect, less switches, less caps, ... I think it's mostly about manufacturing cost. If you build a keyboard yourself, you're glad if you have to solder less. So for sure any prototype of a new design will start small. If you go full size price goes up a lot.
For usability alone those small sizes don't make much sense in an office or on a desk.
NiZ manufactures a reprogrammable 75% split keyboard in their L84 series. Granted this isn’t mechanical, but a (subjectively suprerior) electrostatic capacitive switch keyboard.
Yeah but with QWERTY you can type out the word 'typewriter' using only the top row of the keyboard; so if you're a typewriter salesman QWERTY is the way to go.
(Been using Dvorak for 25 years now. Doesn't matter what the physical keyboard layout is - currently I'm using a Swiss layout)
I was motivated to learn Dvorak in order to get rid of bad keyboard habits. And happily stuck to it. Not sure that I type any faster, but it feels somehow as a more rhytmical, much more pleasant experience.
This mirrors my experience. When I was a teenager I could type rather quickly using only two fingers on each hand. I figured I'd be typing a lot my whole life and it'd be easier to re-train proper typing habits on a whole new layout rather than trying to adapt my QWERTY habits I picked up while playing Runescape in elementary school.
It took about a month to learn, but on the side it largely fixed my QWERTY habits too, and I can freely switch between them pretty easily.
The rhythmic feeling is Dvorak's hand alternation. I use Colemak because it is better for my native tongue, but I really would have preferred the rhythmic typing of Dvorak had it worked as well for other languages.
There is actually a really good paper [1] that tracks the origin of the QWERTY keyboard and the specific incremental changes that bring it from mostly alphabetical to QWERTY.
I don't have a particular beef in the great Dvorak vs. QWERTY debate.
But I really wish I had a brain which could do things like acquire muscle memory fluency in one keyboard layout without losing it in another.
Though, I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... I feel like I'm not using that much of my regular qwerty muscle memory, and what's optimal for a swiping keyboard is probably quite different from what's optimal for a typing keyboard.
> I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here...
Perhaps, but as someone who has been proficient in QWERTY, Dvorak, and Colemak, and who now uses Colemak-DH I can say that I leave my phone and small tablet keyboards on QWERTY.
The separation of common letters in QWERTY forces your finger to move farther when swiping, but that provides a bit more distinguishing information for identifying words. When I tried swiping with Colemak and Dvorak my finger basically scrubbed back and forth across the home row and words were often mis-identified.
There are slightly improved swiping input methods like 8pen, Typewise, Hero, etc but if you are entering enough text to be able to amortize their learning costs you might be better off getting a portable Bluetooth keyboard or just using voice dictation.
Same here. I adopted Dvorak as a youth, so when I got my first smartphone I put the keyboard in Dvorak.
That only lasted a few days for two reasons:
1) What you said about the mistakes. It is so much easier to fat finger in a way that makes autocorrect clueless.
2) The muscle memory doesn't translate at all anyway. Obvious in retrospect, but typing with your thumbs is a completely unrelated skill to touch typing. Turns out both live separately and equally in my brain.
> Though, I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here...
This seems to be an interesting place where the type bar optimization problem of the earliest typewriters came back in a new weirder form. For swiping keyboards to work the words need recognizably different shapes and for irregular pairs to be closer together (just as with the type bar problem) and so QWERTY is very strongly and weirdly optimized for swiping even though it seems very unlikely its inventors could have ever imagined swipe typing.
I can anecdotally admit that touch typing and swipe typing are extremely different muscle memory. I touch type Colemak and swipe type QWERTY. (One of the things that prompted the move to Colemak for touch typing was that I needed to unlearn a ton of bad muscle memory from self-taught/self-"optimized" QWERTY, as it was inflaming RSI/RSI-like symptoms, so the loss of "fluency" there was a requirement/feature for me.)
I switched to Dvorak at the same time as switching to a split, columnar keyboard. I have never used Dvorak on a traditional staggered keyboard, and I have never used QWERTY on a split columnar keyboard. By separating the layout usage on such distinct form factors, I haven't lost QWERTY even after not using it as my primary for years :)
I also do still use QWERTY for touchscreen devices, because you can't keep your hands on the home row on touch screens, so you lose the benefits of Dvorak (and I actually found the common letter combos being near each other to be way more cumbersome on a touch screen).
My first layout was AZERTY (french one), and I added Colemak 4 years ago. I am slightly faster in AZERTY compared to Colemak still (100wpm/90wpm), I never lost the AZERTY, the key is to just use both all the time. I have a shortcut and I alternate constantly, because I need to write french, or because I wanna code.
I feel the Dvorak layout has a bug. In both English and my native language, the letter 'I' occurs much more frequently than 'U', so I've switched the 'U' and 'I' keys.
Does anyone know why this issue seems to have been overlooked by August Dvorak & William Dealey, or was it by design? Perhaps it's to make typing the relatively common English digraph 'ou' a comfortable inward roll, but for me, that doesn't outweigh stretching my left index finger all the time reaching for the I.
It’s common niggle but, as far as I know, nobody is sure of the precise rationale for placing every key, only the broad explanations of the layout that Dvorak published and promoted. The layout wasn’t based only on letter frequency but they attempted to account also for bigram frequency, frequency of repetition within words, frequency with which words are used, and with an objective of rhythmic alternation between hands.
Consider also that it was developed in the 20s and 30s. Nowadays you could throw some moderately hefty compute at almost everything of note written in the English language and come back to an error-free analysis after lunch, but who knows how representative was the corpus they analysed, painstakingly and manually. It might have made perfect sense with their data set.
Ultimately, the English language didn’t evolve to be easy to type, there will always be compromises somewhere, and the English of today isn’t the English of a century ago anyway. I imagine you’d get quite a different layout if you based it on Gen Z text messages or something.
Personally, I can’t help but note that Dvorak’s first name was August.
The Workman layout (much newer, to be fair) "solves" this. Right hand homerow is NEOI, with U on the top row and pressed by the middle finger. I've been using Workman for a few years and would recommend it. I used Dvorak for maybe 1.5-2 years before it.
According to this article, "a 1936 book called Typewriting Behavior" made "comparisons of the new keyboard to a jeep and the old one to an ox".
Jeeps were invented in 1941. Some origin theories of the name date back as far as WW I (but for recruits, not vehicles). If the author truly used this comparison in 1936 it would be a tremendous citation for the word's origin.
Or perhaps the comparison was made in a later edition of the book. Don't know.
For a keyboard that aims to the title of "Scientific", isn't it weird to offer the "zero" key after the "9" instead of its natural (mathematically speaking) position before the "1"?
The original Dvorak layout had 0 positioned on the right index finger (where 7 is on Qwerty keyboards). The layout of the numeric keys on what passes as a "Dvorak" layout today was apparently determined by the ANSI committee for... reasons.
For everyone complaining about the issues with app shortcuts when using Dvorak, the solution is to use a keymap that switches to QWERTY when you hold down the CTRL or CMD key. It is a bit unfortunate that common CLI commands (`ls` is the worst offender) and semicolon usage in programming languages are designed around QWERTY, but I still prefer Dvorak.
I switched to Dvorak about 27 years ago. And I switched back to Qwerty about 26.75 years ago. I got to the point where I could comfortably touch-type in Dvorak to about the same speed as I could Qwerty. While Dvorak was a slightly better layout ergonomically, it wasn't good enough to justify the frustration of switching to a computer that I didn't own at work. I've heard that some people can switch easily and touch-type on both layouts, but I couldn't.
I am curious, what sort of work do you do that has you frequently typing on other people's computers?
I started out on Dvorak and have never learned to touch-type with QWERTY. People who normally see me rolling along smoothly on my own keyboard sometimes find it comical to watch me slowly hunt-and-peck on a QWERTY machine, but this is necessary so rarely that it's never bothered me.
I mean, switching to a non-owned computer will be frustrating when you're used to Dvorak, because you're used to a more ergonomical layout.
I touch-type both Colemak and Qwerty fine, but I still sigh a little internally any time I have to use the inferior layout for more than a few minutes.
To give a contrasting viewpoint, I don't think you need to change your per-program keybinds. I've used vim with qwerty, dvorak, and Workman. I never rebound hjkl or anything else. The letters are in another spot, which you have to get used to... just like you're already doing to type words at all. Plus, in the case of vim you'll probably use stuff like e and w and search to get around faster a lot of the time anyway.
As for games, I always rebind everything, or play with controller. It's a one-time thing per-game and then you're comfortable and can also use an in-game chat without trouble. Plus you can use this chance to switch to ESDF-style (the equivalent in your layout, so RSHT for me) controls from WASD controls so your fingers can be in the normal homerow position.
I've been using Dvorak for around 6 years now, don't know what you mean with 'universally shitty default keybinding experience'. I don't have any issues either in Emacs or in applications which use the inferior CUA keybindings. I suppose if you want to use certain keybindings one-handed it could be awkward, but I prefer holding the modifier with the opposite hand (for example right hand control + left hand 'a').
I use colemak so a lot of keybinds in programs are similar enough to not be too bad. Vim was surprisingly easy to adjust to, although hjkl are in terrible positions in colemak. It’s kind of nice though because it forces you not to rely on hjkl too much. For games, I usually just switch back to qwerty.
The only particularly bad case I've found is v/w/z being right next to one another, which can be annoying. Still, I think I've won out overall. I spend a lot more time typing text than I do invoking keyboard shortcuts.
Regarding games, switching keyboard layouts in Windows 10/11 is thankfully super easy. (And some games do get it right, and the bindings go by physical position, so they just fall into place - though personally I've never liked this, because I don't really know where any of the Dvorak keys are individually, for non-text purposes. I'd rather switch to QWERTY and then I can look at the labels on the keys to figure out where to put my fingers.)
In gaming, my solution to "I'm tired of always rebinding keys and/or finding games that don't support easy key rebinding" became "I'll just play with an Xbox controller by default". My home is full of Xbox controllers anyway and PC game support for them has been really good for a while (and even better now post-Steam Deck).
I know it is not everyone's favorite solution, but it is fun for me.
I have a new keyboard with a physical switch on it to switch keyboard layouts / settings, wonder if I should give it a try sometime. But, same issue, I switch between typing, gaming and programming. Switching to dvorak would mean I would also need to remap all my applications.
I have issues with my right hand due to damage to my brachial plexus. I changed to Dvorak about 22 years ago, and have far less fatigue and pain when typing longer documents.
The article mentions in passing how Dvorak may help people with physical hand issues - well it certainly helps for me. YMMV
I tried Dvorak for a while but gave up after I realized:
1. Not only are the key positions for typing different, but all the keyboard shortcuts I know needed to be re-learned too, and were often in much worse locations (as just one of many problems, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are no longer next to each other)
2. I still need to be good with QWERTY because basically everything uses it.
It's a shame, because it does seem more efficient (you can type a lot of words without having to move your fingers from the home row), but I just felt like it was too much work for too little gain.
It is one of the things I like about Colemak that it takes into account QWERTY's dominance in computers and intentionally doesn't move a lot a shortcut keys and punctuation. Semicolon is the most obvious punctuation mark that does move, most of the rest stay where they are. The big list of shortcut keys that stay the same place includes AZXCVBMWQ. XCV not moving is especially a big deal, as you also mention copy and paste as key shortcut examples.
In general Colemak doesn't move keys to radically far from their QWERTY positions (many stay on the same finger, even), so I've heard using it and QWERTY together isn't too bad. In my personal case, I had a terrible QWERTY form and realized I don't have to do anything but "hunt-and-peck" in QWERTY when using other people's machines. I may feel a bit like an idiot doing it, but it turns out, most people don't even notice if you touch type or hunt and peck (partly because so many more people hunt and peck than you tend to realize; even in a world where QWERTY touch typing has to be taught in schools, I think it is still a skill like Cursive that you think everyone else uses once you learn it, but you forget how hard it was to learn in the first place). It's more "my guilt" that I "use QWERTY poorly" than anything anyone else actually cares about.
Not only are Ctl+C and Ctl+V not next to each other, but they move next to other shortcuts that are annoying to mis-hit, like the one to close a browser tab...
Remapping the shortcuts is possible but too much effort; I just live with it.
Fortunately, modern video games seem to understand different layouts and automatically change their input to match the actual finger placement rather than what they QWERTY letters would be.
Re point 1, the standard solution is a keymap that switches to Qwerty when ctrl/command is held down. It works surprisingly well, and is widely available.
Re point 2, I have not found this to be true (when do I ever need to use someone else's keyboard?), but also I haven't lost my qwerty skill anyway.
The only problem I can find is that the only Mac mod I can find with this layout that is not completely custom has an annoying and minor difference with the Windows and Linux versions of the same type of mod.
I switched to Colemak pro'lly 15 years ago, and while my fingers certainly move around a lot less, I don't think my top speed on typeracer.com has improved over what I was able to do on QWERTY before switching, nor do I seem to make fewer errors.
On the whole 1) I do like Colemak a bit better, but 2) I don't think it was worth the switch, although 3) it's certainly not worth a switch back. I think 4) if everyone started with Colemak things would be better, but 5) given that they don't, I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone else choose Colemak over QWERTY if they're learning, based on my own experience.
What's kind of weird is that with all the ink / bits spilt over this issue, all we have are two 50+-year-old studies whose raw data are unavailable. How hard would it really be to re-run an RCT?
I type Dvorak around my old qwerty speed. It’s probably not possible to be faster. For really fast qwerty typists, the brain has multiple fingers with the right hand contortions in motion, hitting keys in order, just in time. Dvorak eliminated hand pain by reducing motion, but it didn’t give my brain the ability to orchestrate my fingers with tighter timing.
As a Colemak (DH) user for ~5 years, I share these experiences.
I did a monkeytype benchmark before switching, and I still barely hit the same numbers, so it's certainly not a magic fix for more typing speed. What is left then is the argument concerning ergonomics: which I am not sure is worth the trade-offs.
Every time I now sit at another's computer I am unable to type without glancing at the keyboard. Moreover, I am trying to switch to (n)vim, and am completely at a loss navigating, as the hjkl keys are now scattered across the keyboard -- beating their purpose.
Right -- see, I basically maxed out "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" in high school. (That is, I practiced with it regularly until it couldn't find any particular problem with my typing, and resorted to giving me practice typing symbols, at which point I got bored and quit.) What prompted me to look at Colemak (and mechanical keyboards) was when some friend/colleagues at work were playing with typeracer.com, and I clocked in at 120WPM on one of the first races. One of my friends didn't really believe it and asked me to repeat the performance in front of him, which I did.
That made me think, maybe if I switched to Colemak and got a better keyboard, I could go even faster. I did both; and though my forearms certainly feel less tired on the odd occasion that I have long bouts of continuous typing to do, I'm neither noticeably faster nor more accurate.
So, both our anecdata seem to match the conclusion of the 1956 study mentioned in this article: That it was the intentional practice that primarily resulted in the improvements, not the keyboard layout; intentional practice on QWERTY would probably yield similar speed improvements to practice on Colemak or Dvorak.
I've had a similar history, and also switched mostly to reduce fatigue & the risk of RSI. Colemak seems easier to use, even if it's not any faster. Of course it's quite possible that the improvement is simply due to the deliberate practice needed to switch layouts; even more than learning to type in the first place switching layouts takes focus and therefore makes it easier to notice & correct bad habits.
Also a Colemak (DH) user. I agree completely with everything you've written but I'll add that I'm happy I switched even though it was definitely not "worth" it by any quantitative measure.
Isn't dvorak optimized for alternating fingers but doesn't leverage same hand finger rolls? There are more modern layouts that take rolls into account.
I tried to convert to Dvorak. I even switched my keycaps, but when I started learning with linux application, I finished at level 3. It required me to write three different letters. When there was 1 - it was okay. When 2 - quite nice. But 3 - it made me feel pain in the back and in the brain. It felt like something was going very wrong with my nervous system. I had to quit.
It is likely that you did not have enough patience.
When planning to switch between keyboard layouts, you must be prepared to allocate at least a week in which you will not have to type anything useful at the computer, because initially your typing speed will drop tremendously and you must be able to resist the temptation of reverting to Qwerty or whichever is the layout used previously.
After a week of practice, using only the new key layout for everything, you should be able to use a computer for normal tasks, but still you will be much slower than before. After a month, you should recover your typing speed and begin to realize that typing has become much more comfortable.
It is preferable to not switch the key caps. Even if you have never achieved blind touch typing on Qwerty, it is much easier to achieve it on Dvorak and this can be a benefit of switching the keyboard layouts. At least for me, the assignment of letters to keys has been much easier to memorize for Dvorak than for Qwerty, being more logical. Of course, after enough practice, muscle memory will take over and you will no longer be aware of the key assignments.
People make this argument a lot, but you should optimize for the most common situation before an edge case. I am usually at my own PC/keyboard and I greatly enjoy my weird keyboard and layout. I can't type qwerty as well as I used to, but I rarely have to. (If I had to do it more I'd probably retrain it to make switching back and forth less troublesome).
It reminds me also of people who swear by using default settings in their editor or other programs so they can feel at home anywhere. Yeah, that's sort of a benefit, but I don't think it outweighs optimizing your workflow at your own machine.
I had a friend who used a split keyboard, blank keycaps, and a very odd layout (QGMLWB or BEAKL2 I think) at work. IIRC he said he kept a second normal keyboard at his desk for when someone would come by to pair program. This is sorta the inverse of your scenario. I guess he'd need to carry his keyboard to someone else's desk, or just type slower.
In general, even if it may not be "optimal," significantly non-standard keyboards (yes, Mac isn't quite like Windows) is IMO more trouble than it's worth.
Back to the author's point: "good enough" is the bar, when we are talking about a choice that impacts millions of users. Changing "good enough" to "optimal" requires gigantic costs in retraining and redesign, and simply isn't worth it.
Tech support scenarios are most frequently remote, when both the IT person and the assisted user are typing on their own keyboards, sharing the screen.
In this normal scenario, the keyboard layouts do not matter.
"Tech support" when both people are in the front of the same computer happens more between friends or colleagues, when typing speed does not matter, than in professional corporate tech support.
It is a problem for any well-designed application with shortcuts. For they'd make the shortcuts often used to be according to the OS HIG, and a priority to easy to reach keys being also shortcuts often used (in that order). The latter is just part of learning curve (we all grew up with Qwerty, right? right?!) but the latter is an issue for any non-standard Qwerty (depending on how much they differ from Qwerty; which Dvorak does a lot but Colemak and Workman and Azerty and Qwertz already less so).
So what you say counts for any non-standard keyboard. There's always a learning curve. I tried going to 60%, now I settled for 80%/TKL and there are situations where I miss the other 20%, but my (vertical) mouse is in a more natural position. At least with Dvorak, all the physical keys are the same size as a standard Qwerty, so you could just set to Qwerty English-American and be done with it.
This is called 'security thorough obscurity' - no one can mess with your computer in case that you forget to lock it (e.g. when you go make yourself coffee at work).
The issue with all the layouts for me is the challenge of buying a device with them. I use Neo2 daily (I changed due to injuries and it has helped me recover and still be able to type) and the only method I enjoyed was getting a blank keyboard on a Framework Laptop (as stickers all over the place is not for me) and I bought an MNT Research Keyboard in a Neo2 layout. Regular usage is key, and a desire/need to change keyboards. I previously tried to switch to Dvorak on one of those Typematrix keyboards and never kept it up as the pain of switching wasn't worth it.
I can still use qwerty due to muscle memory when I need to, I just find myself making dumb mistakes initially. As others have said, typing speed is not a focus due to my ability to only think at a specific pace.
At least for me, achieving blind touch typing has been much easier with Dvorak than with Qwerty.
I have used Qwerty for decades, but I was still looking from time to time at the keyboard. After switching to Dvorak on a Qwerty marked keyboard, I have never needed to look at the keyboard again, so there is no point in having a Dvorak-marked keyboard when a standard keyboard is fine.
So a good ergonomic keyboard should be used, but how the keys are marked should not matter.
The biggest myth is that it's some cosmically different typing experience. Dvorak is a bit more comfortable, rhythmic. That's it. I've used it for 20 years on my personal computer. On my work laptop I use qwerty.
Need to type faster? Spend some time practising every day and you will gain more speed within weeks than from just switching layouts. Most people don't as speed often isn't actually that important. I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed. Need less hand movement? Placing symbols, arrow keys etc as secondary function onto the central keys with a programmable keyboard helps with that, changing to dvorak doesn't as much because on a modern keyboard you can reach all letters without hand movement either way.
If you ever have a thought that you want to put into words but need to wait for your fingers, you are being bottlenecked by your typing. Most people think and speak faster than they can type, especially in short bursts; and I'm saying that, as someone who can comfortably type at ~160-180wpm and burst over 200 for a few seconds at a time, I still find myself waiting for my fingers. Holding a conversation over IM is one of the most common places where this bottleneck becomes very noticeable.
I'm not sure, I don't think that happens a lot to me, especially because I speak and type in multiple languages. I as well, feel bottlenecked by the brain, not typing speed. Even when I use voice-to-text software, I struggle to speak out loud my thoughts in a well-structured and well-paced manner, which somehow doesn't happen during normal conversations, only when I'm trying to write my thoughts down.
That being said, as someone who keeps their hands on the keyboard a dozen hours a day, of course I would love to find a way to type much, much faster and more accurately. I bet it comes in very handy when taking notes during Zoom meetings, etc., but my vim-muscle memory freaks out even thinking of having to rebind hjkl keys to something else. I wonder if vimmers who switched to Dvorak or Colemak can share their perspective. I've never gotten brave enough to give them a try, always felt like a waste of time for questionable benefit, but that's probably how most people think about vim-navigation, which has become an inextricable part of my keyboard workflow and I am very grateful for my younger self for learning vim-navigation.
[1]: https://entropicthoughts.com/typing-fast-is-about-latency-no...
To be fair, that single key is used rather excessively compared to the rest.
On my keyboard I cover six keys with my two thumbs. It eliminates almost all hand movement and guess what, I feel a difference in my pinky fingers but not in the thumbs. I'm not saying every keyboard should be like this, but I think on a large scale you can probably improve wirst and hand health in the population by making a few small tweaks in how keys are arranged.
As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory. It's like a novice golfer complaining that it hurts their hips when they rotate through the swing, or a tennis player complaining that trying to add spin with a wrist twist feels weird, or any millions of other example of "feels weird without practice". Hell, most people can't do the most basic of yoga poses without practice. Muscles need to be stretched and trained into doing what you want them to do. Once they are, all of the complaints go away and things feel normal.
Is QWERTY the most efficient, no. But as someone else commented, speed is not my issue. Thinking what needs to be typed is definitely my speed regulator. If I were to just do basic text dictation or re-typing while reading a direct source, my speeds increase dramatically.
I find that most typing complaints are from those that never had formal typing instruction and are self taught with games or similar. I was fortunate to have one full year of typing while in high school, and it is by far the most used class instruction I've ever had.
> As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory.
Becoming a good typist doesn't magically change your pinkie from being the weakest finger on your hand to the strongest. That's basic anatomy. And, specifically if you are a good typist, then your neutral hand position will absolutely involve stretching your pinkie to hit enter/backspace/shift - they're exactly wrong with their assertion.
I'm vaguely aware of the Kinesis Advantage - it looks like a pretty solid ergonomic keyboard (although it may not be for me because it's not a split keyboard and my shoulders are pretty wide). Does the software do QMK stuff like mod-tap?
While it's not a true split, the key wells are ~6" apart which is plenty IMO. They do have the similar Advantage 360 Professional which is a true split and uses ZMK for more programmability.
Most experimental layouts that add more features make the mistake to overload it, some of these things even look totally thumb-driven.... This make everything very confusing. Just Shift for a start, would be good. The pinky is too much overloaded. Offloading some of it to the thumb would actually be an improvement.
I don't agree with your statement about switching though. I was a very good Qwerty typist, but I'm much faster and more accurate on Dvorak. Switching was one of the most useful things I have ever done.
A big part of why I wanted to make the switch at all is because I was experiencing fatigue in my hands, and I felt that it could be due to my improper typing habits that I developed from mostly learning to type through playing videogames. I wanted to properly type from the home row, and the split columnar keyboard basically enforces that, and Dvorak makes it even easier.
I will say though, I type at about the same speed that I did before I made the switch. Switching layouts almost certainly will not enable you to type faster. Switching layouts encourages you to deliberately practice typing on that layout (I did lots of typing challenges while learning) which will make you faster. The biggest benefit for me has actually been in my back! The split keyboard allows me to rotate my shoulders back a lot more, which makes me feel way better at the end of the day. My hands are less fatigued too, but I don't feel like that was as big of a deal for me.
I have switched a few years ago to Dvorak. I do not think that this has changed much my typing speed, which has never been important for me. However, it has greatly increased my typing comfort.
Now I consider that switching to Dvorak was one of my best decisions and I only regret that I have spent decades using Qwerty without trying alternatives.
Of course, using an ergonomic keyboard is at least as important as the key layout.
I’m about the same speed as I was on qwerty, but my back and shoulders feel a lot better with the split keyboard. It feels really good to type with an alternative layout, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, the learning process was pretty arduous for me, and I’ve kind of lost my ability to use qwerty.
I would definitely recommend a split keyboard though. The ergonomics are much better.
Of course over long periods of time we're bottlenecked by our brains. But the things to write come in bursts, and typing speed blocks there. Also transcribing what someone is saying, needs high speed.
My experience completely contradicts your assertions.
This is what puzzles me most of the mechanical keyboard market: you can have whatever shit cramped in on a 60%/75% keyboard but the spacebar is still the long slab.
Eg: Shurikey Hanzo 001 65% is especially... bold in this
The “missing” keys are on additional layers reached via a modifier key, or by overloading keys on tap/hold, or by increasingly esoteric methods the smaller the board gets: chording, tap dance, etc. They’re typically no less accessible than capital letters, while allowing you to keep your fingers on the home row.
For me, the additional keys on my larger keyboards rarely prove useful in practice. I end up mostly using the same subset available on the 60% I’m typing on now – it’s quicker and more comfortable than reaching over to the dedicated key.
In a lot of software those extra function keys are well used, easily go into muscle memory and help to safe a lot of time.
For usability alone those small sizes don't make much sense in an office or on a desk.
(Been using Dvorak for 25 years now. Doesn't matter what the physical keyboard layout is - currently I'm using a Swiss layout)
It took about a month to learn, but on the side it largely fixed my QWERTY habits too, and I can freely switch between them pretty easily.
1. https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/server/api/core/bitst...
But I really wish I had a brain which could do things like acquire muscle memory fluency in one keyboard layout without losing it in another.
Though, I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... I feel like I'm not using that much of my regular qwerty muscle memory, and what's optimal for a swiping keyboard is probably quite different from what's optimal for a typing keyboard.
Perhaps, but as someone who has been proficient in QWERTY, Dvorak, and Colemak, and who now uses Colemak-DH I can say that I leave my phone and small tablet keyboards on QWERTY.
The separation of common letters in QWERTY forces your finger to move farther when swiping, but that provides a bit more distinguishing information for identifying words. When I tried swiping with Colemak and Dvorak my finger basically scrubbed back and forth across the home row and words were often mis-identified.
There are slightly improved swiping input methods like 8pen, Typewise, Hero, etc but if you are entering enough text to be able to amortize their learning costs you might be better off getting a portable Bluetooth keyboard or just using voice dictation.
That only lasted a few days for two reasons:
1) What you said about the mistakes. It is so much easier to fat finger in a way that makes autocorrect clueless.
2) The muscle memory doesn't translate at all anyway. Obvious in retrospect, but typing with your thumbs is a completely unrelated skill to touch typing. Turns out both live separately and equally in my brain.
I also recommend dactly (see also https://ryanis.cool/cosmos/ for a more generic keyboard generation)
My biggest issue is how often I hit '.' instead of 'p' for some reason.
This seems to be an interesting place where the type bar optimization problem of the earliest typewriters came back in a new weirder form. For swiping keyboards to work the words need recognizably different shapes and for irregular pairs to be closer together (just as with the type bar problem) and so QWERTY is very strongly and weirdly optimized for swiping even though it seems very unlikely its inventors could have ever imagined swipe typing.
I can anecdotally admit that touch typing and swipe typing are extremely different muscle memory. I touch type Colemak and swipe type QWERTY. (One of the things that prompted the move to Colemak for touch typing was that I needed to unlearn a ton of bad muscle memory from self-taught/self-"optimized" QWERTY, as it was inflaming RSI/RSI-like symptoms, so the loss of "fluency" there was a requirement/feature for me.)
I also do still use QWERTY for touchscreen devices, because you can't keep your hands on the home row on touch screens, so you lose the benefits of Dvorak (and I actually found the common letter combos being near each other to be way more cumbersome on a touch screen).
Does anyone know why this issue seems to have been overlooked by August Dvorak & William Dealey, or was it by design? Perhaps it's to make typing the relatively common English digraph 'ou' a comfortable inward roll, but for me, that doesn't outweigh stretching my left index finger all the time reaching for the I.
Consider also that it was developed in the 20s and 30s. Nowadays you could throw some moderately hefty compute at almost everything of note written in the English language and come back to an error-free analysis after lunch, but who knows how representative was the corpus they analysed, painstakingly and manually. It might have made perfect sense with their data set.
Ultimately, the English language didn’t evolve to be easy to type, there will always be compromises somewhere, and the English of today isn’t the English of a century ago anyway. I imagine you’d get quite a different layout if you based it on Gen Z text messages or something.
Personally, I can’t help but note that Dvorak’s first name was August.
Jeeps were invented in 1941. Some origin theories of the name date back as far as WW I (but for recruits, not vehicles). If the author truly used this comparison in 1936 it would be a tremendous citation for the word's origin.
Or perhaps the comparison was made in a later edition of the book. Don't know.
(Typewriting Behavior, for the curious: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.74878/page/n11...)
I personally prefer reuse of the existing word "jeep" meaning "new recruit" to mean "new vehicle". But that's just an opinion.
I started out on Dvorak and have never learned to touch-type with QWERTY. People who normally see me rolling along smoothly on my own keyboard sometimes find it comical to watch me slowly hunt-and-peck on a QWERTY machine, but this is necessary so rarely that it's never bothered me.
I touch-type both Colemak and Qwerty fine, but I still sigh a little internally any time I have to use the inferior layout for more than a few minutes.
Either customize every app to better match the layout, or live with the afterthought UX.
Oh, and gaming. Better get used to switching to qwerty.
As for games, I always rebind everything, or play with controller. It's a one-time thing per-game and then you're comfortable and can also use an in-game chat without trouble. Plus you can use this chance to switch to ESDF-style (the equivalent in your layout, so RSHT for me) controls from WASD controls so your fingers can be in the normal homerow position.
Regarding games, switching keyboard layouts in Windows 10/11 is thankfully super easy. (And some games do get it right, and the bindings go by physical position, so they just fall into place - though personally I've never liked this, because I don't really know where any of the Dvorak keys are individually, for non-text purposes. I'd rather switch to QWERTY and then I can look at the labels on the keys to figure out where to put my fingers.)
I know it is not everyone's favorite solution, but it is fun for me.
On Colemak, WASD becomes WARS.
What’s not to like? :)
The article mentions in passing how Dvorak may help people with physical hand issues - well it certainly helps for me. YMMV
1. Not only are the key positions for typing different, but all the keyboard shortcuts I know needed to be re-learned too, and were often in much worse locations (as just one of many problems, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are no longer next to each other)
2. I still need to be good with QWERTY because basically everything uses it.
It's a shame, because it does seem more efficient (you can type a lot of words without having to move your fingers from the home row), but I just felt like it was too much work for too little gain.
In general Colemak doesn't move keys to radically far from their QWERTY positions (many stay on the same finger, even), so I've heard using it and QWERTY together isn't too bad. In my personal case, I had a terrible QWERTY form and realized I don't have to do anything but "hunt-and-peck" in QWERTY when using other people's machines. I may feel a bit like an idiot doing it, but it turns out, most people don't even notice if you touch type or hunt and peck (partly because so many more people hunt and peck than you tend to realize; even in a world where QWERTY touch typing has to be taught in schools, I think it is still a skill like Cursive that you think everyone else uses once you learn it, but you forget how hard it was to learn in the first place). It's more "my guilt" that I "use QWERTY poorly" than anything anyone else actually cares about.
Remapping the shortcuts is possible but too much effort; I just live with it.
Fortunately, modern video games seem to understand different layouts and automatically change their input to match the actual finger placement rather than what they QWERTY letters would be.
Re point 2, I have not found this to be true (when do I ever need to use someone else's keyboard?), but also I haven't lost my qwerty skill anyway.
https://andre-wagner.medium.com/colemak-dh-my-journey-to-cha...
The only problem I can find is that the only Mac mod I can find with this layout that is not completely custom has an annoying and minor difference with the Windows and Linux versions of the same type of mod.
I switched to Colemak pro'lly 15 years ago, and while my fingers certainly move around a lot less, I don't think my top speed on typeracer.com has improved over what I was able to do on QWERTY before switching, nor do I seem to make fewer errors.
On the whole 1) I do like Colemak a bit better, but 2) I don't think it was worth the switch, although 3) it's certainly not worth a switch back. I think 4) if everyone started with Colemak things would be better, but 5) given that they don't, I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone else choose Colemak over QWERTY if they're learning, based on my own experience.
What's kind of weird is that with all the ink / bits spilt over this issue, all we have are two 50+-year-old studies whose raw data are unavailable. How hard would it really be to re-run an RCT?
I did a monkeytype benchmark before switching, and I still barely hit the same numbers, so it's certainly not a magic fix for more typing speed. What is left then is the argument concerning ergonomics: which I am not sure is worth the trade-offs.
Every time I now sit at another's computer I am unable to type without glancing at the keyboard. Moreover, I am trying to switch to (n)vim, and am completely at a loss navigating, as the hjkl keys are now scattered across the keyboard -- beating their purpose.
In general, I do type faster than before, and faster than many people around me. That's likely only because I actually had to practice.
That made me think, maybe if I switched to Colemak and got a better keyboard, I could go even faster. I did both; and though my forearms certainly feel less tired on the odd occasion that I have long bouts of continuous typing to do, I'm neither noticeably faster nor more accurate.
So, both our anecdata seem to match the conclusion of the 1956 study mentioned in this article: That it was the intentional practice that primarily resulted in the improvements, not the keyboard layout; intentional practice on QWERTY would probably yield similar speed improvements to practice on Colemak or Dvorak.
When planning to switch between keyboard layouts, you must be prepared to allocate at least a week in which you will not have to type anything useful at the computer, because initially your typing speed will drop tremendously and you must be able to resist the temptation of reverting to Qwerty or whichever is the layout used previously.
After a week of practice, using only the new key layout for everything, you should be able to use a computer for normal tasks, but still you will be much slower than before. After a month, you should recover your typing speed and begin to realize that typing has become much more comfortable.
It is preferable to not switch the key caps. Even if you have never achieved blind touch typing on Qwerty, it is much easier to achieve it on Dvorak and this can be a benefit of switching the keyboard layouts. At least for me, the assignment of letters to keys has been much easier to memorize for Dvorak than for Qwerty, being more logical. Of course, after enough practice, muscle memory will take over and you will no longer be aware of the key assignments.
It reminds me also of people who swear by using default settings in their editor or other programs so they can feel at home anywhere. Yeah, that's sort of a benefit, but I don't think it outweighs optimizing your workflow at your own machine.
I had a friend who used a split keyboard, blank keycaps, and a very odd layout (QGMLWB or BEAKL2 I think) at work. IIRC he said he kept a second normal keyboard at his desk for when someone would come by to pair program. This is sorta the inverse of your scenario. I guess he'd need to carry his keyboard to someone else's desk, or just type slower.
Back in the in-person days when sharing a keyboard with a coworker was more common, you have the very handy switcher icon in the taskbar.
In this normal scenario, the keyboard layouts do not matter.
"Tech support" when both people are in the front of the same computer happens more between friends or colleagues, when typing speed does not matter, than in professional corporate tech support.
So what you say counts for any non-standard keyboard. There's always a learning curve. I tried going to 60%, now I settled for 80%/TKL and there are situations where I miss the other 20%, but my (vertical) mouse is in a more natural position. At least with Dvorak, all the physical keys are the same size as a standard Qwerty, so you could just set to Qwerty English-American and be done with it.
I can still use qwerty due to muscle memory when I need to, I just find myself making dumb mistakes initially. As others have said, typing speed is not a focus due to my ability to only think at a specific pace.
I have used Qwerty for decades, but I was still looking from time to time at the keyboard. After switching to Dvorak on a Qwerty marked keyboard, I have never needed to look at the keyboard again, so there is no point in having a Dvorak-marked keyboard when a standard keyboard is fine.
So a good ergonomic keyboard should be used, but how the keys are marked should not matter.