How-To Geek
Answer: Dvorak
Although we live in a modern age of advanced electronics and lightening fast computers the most basic of interfaces, the humble keyboard, dates back to the 1860s. The first mechanical typewriter patent was filed in 1867 by Christopher Latham Sholes. The first type writer had two critical flaws. The first: if two keys in close physical proximity were struck rapidly by a quick typist the machine would jam up. Second: the current line of type was hidden by paper carriage so jams and errors could only be discovered by either raising the carriage or happening upon the error after an entire line of text had been typed. Sholes experimented with various letter combinations to resolve the jamming problem. By 1973 Sholes had refined the keyboard layout to something that would be recognizable, albeit slightly jumbled, to a modern typist. In 1878 he pitched his invention to the Remington and Sons. They accepted the design and made a few minor adjustments which included shuffling a few keys into what we now recognize as the modern QWERTY keyboard and introducing lower and uppercase letters accessible by a shift key. Although Sholes and Remington has solved the problem of jamming keys, a strictly mechanical problem, they did it in a most impractical of ways. They slowed down typists by arranging the keys in such a fashion as to keep them from typing too rapidly.
Some 60 years later, in the 1930s, another keyboard designer came along. Dr. August Dvorak and his brother-inlaw Dr. William Dealey were dismayed with the poor design of the QWERTY keyboard layout. They had studied the QWERTY keyboard and compiled a list of its shortcomings. They noted that many letter combinations required awkward motions, were typed with the same finger, required jumping over the home row, and often left one hand idle while one did all the work for the combinations. In addition 30% of the typing was done on the lower row and 52% was done on the upper row, which means a whopping 82% of key strokes involved moving away from the home row and unnecessarily stressing the hands while slowing the typist down.
To alleviate these problems the Dvorak keyboard adheres to a set of design principles that include: arrangement of letters to maximize alternating use of hands, the most common letters and diagraphs (letter pairs representing a phonetic unit) are the easiest to type–70% of the keystrokes on a DVORAK keyboard are on the home row as oppose to the 18% on a QWERTY keyboard–the least common letters are on the bottom row, and finally common typing patterns flow from the outer edge to the center of the keyboard. Why from the outer edge to the center? Tap your fingers on the closest surface. The super majority of people naturally tap their fingers from little finger to index finger, Dvorak and his brother were sticklers for maximizing efficiency and they tried to incorporate every strain-reducing and speed-increasing trick into their keyboard layout. The brothers filed a patent for the DVORAK keyboard in 1936.
Despite the increase in speed, the decrease in stress injuries, and the overall increase in efficiency the DVORAK keyboard failed to catch on for a variety of reasons. Dvorak and his brother introduced their keyboard layout during the Great Depression when businesses could ill afford to overhaul their type writer inventories, World War II was right around the corner and most factories were retooled for the war effort (including type writer factories), and an over all resistance to adoption by typists already fluent in the use of the QWERTY keyboard. At this point in the Dvorak’s history the layout is widely regarded as an all around better option but, sadly, few want to go through the effort of learning a new way of typing.
- By Jason Fitzpatrick on 01/2/12
Comments (32)
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GeorgieVI’m surprised no one has mentioned the ability of Windows to select any one of 4 Dvorak keyboard setups to replace the QWERTY pattern. When i first heard about Dvorak some 20 years ago or so, i was enthralled by the concept of typing more quickly with less effort. As others have stated, it took a month or so to master Dvorak, but i loved it. When i left self-employment and entered mainstream employment, i felt as Robbie C did – about hunt & pecking on the clients’ QWERTY keyboards. So, i set up the Dvorak conversion software on their computers for my own edification. Then i went back to the QWERTY keyboard again as did Robbie. After a short time of disgust with the insane downgrade, i bought a dedicated Dvorak keyboard (which was switchable to QWERTY by the press of a button), installed same at my desk and never looked back. It was much simpler to relearn Dvorak than it had been to relearn QWERTY. Since i have been retired for about 2 years, i have had to return to my last place of employ to help in some difficult situations. When i must work at my successor’s desk, i simply switch the keyboard back to Dvorak. . . . And, of course, i have a newer model of the switchable Dvorak keyboard here at home where i am using it to type this to you.
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CitrusRain
So far I’ve made 2 attempts to learn Dvorak.
The first time I got kinda far, but then couldn’t handle the juggling of layouts. Was unable to type on either, and ended up back on qwerty due to all the laptops in the house.The second time, I still had a bit of memory from the first time, but ended up having to cut my attempt short because of work.
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MattMo
Robbie C – thanks good info!
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tommy2rs
Fastest way for me is to get someone else to type it…lol. Been doing that since typing class in jr. high. I was more valuable to the teacher in my ability to fix the dead typewriters that were legion. Yep, I said typewriters, it was that long ago. Of course that’s why I type like an eagle today, circle, plunge, strike.
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Kevalin
“Type like an eagle…”
Thanks, Tommy; you gave me my first laugh of the day.
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jokerbelmont
Loved the article, thanks. I feel this series is getting better with time keep it up :D
@Robbie C Excellent anecdote -
HorrentibusUmbris
When is “How-To-Geek” going to cease being “How-To-Abuse-The-English-Language” ?
The quality of writing in this article would receive a “D” in a freshman English class.
Egregious errrors include: mistakes in spelling that any modern word processor would flag for you; proofreading errors (if there is any proofreading being done). Run-sentences, and a lack of any sense of how to use paragraph spacing for flow-of-ideas.
Suggestion: hire an Editor.
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Jack
@GeorgieV What keyboard is it that you use? I have been looking for one but can’t decide which to get, I would love to be able to learn DVORAK and be able to switch back to QWERTY as well.
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reholmes
No mention of the 2i keyboard.
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Aaronoroff
Where can I get a Dvorak keyboard?
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Darren
@Robbie C:
When it comes to shortcut keys, Macs and Linux does a much better job at retaining key layouts. I’m using Ubuntu 10.10 right now, and I can switch between Dvorak and QWERTY in one keypress, AND the shortcut keys will not get shifted around when on Dvorak keyboard. I’m recommending Ubuntu to anyone who wishes to use Dvorak, but needs compatibility as the same time.It’s sad that many folks are stuck with Windows, however :(
p.s. In Ubuntu some programs’ shortcuts won’t retain, like Chromium. Firefox works, however.
Awesome article! But what’s up with the last sentence?
Any chance of getting something about colemak? ^_^
“I myself” is in “close proximity” to having sharp sticks driven through both eye sockets.
:-)
I have been using Dvorak for about 6 months. The learning curve was particularly rough for about a month, but I am very happy with it now. I thought Colemak was also faster than QWERTY; my understanding is that Colemak offers similar benefits to the Dvorak layout, but minimizes the learning curve by attempting to keep more keys in their QWERTY location. Should the trivia question be which is the fastest keyboard layout?
A good study on this is at http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/, where there is a scary amount of depth to the keyboard modeling and optimization problem. It may be overkill, but his model even takes into account “inboard stroke flow”…the tendency to be able to iterate through the fingers more easily from pinky to index than vice-versa.
In particular, check out his model’s comparative analysis of various layouts, including his “fully-optimized” QGMLWB layout (http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?popular_alternatives).
I’m bilingual in QWERTY and QGMLWB, and probably one of the few in the world to be so. You can immediately tell the enormous conservation of finger motion with almost any layout other than QWERTY.
If you’re in the mood to adopt another layout, I recommend the open-source KeyMapper (http://code.google.com/p/keymapper/). Since Windows 7 eliminated per-user keymaps, remember to switch to boot-mapping view before making your changes however. It also requires a reboot to take effect. Useful for pranking your friends as well.
Two more quick notes:
I recommend Colemak. If I had it to do over again, that’s what I’d choose. http://colemak.com/
70% of the keys on the top row happen to be in the word “typewriter”. It is conjectured that this is so that salesman could type that word quickly in demonstrations.
I am a programmer. I learned DVORAK after about two weeks of hell and used it for about a year. I thought it would be cool to be different – and it was indeed easier and faster to type basic text. Over time I completely overwrote my ability to type in QWERTY. This is fine when using my own computers but quite embarrassing when trying to show someone something on their machine. It doesen’t look good for a so-called IT professional to be hunting for keys on the Executive Vice-Presidents workstation (I tried to explain, but he probably thought I was speaking Russian). Anyway, one day I came to realize that most programs’ keyboard shortcuts are designed around the QWERTY layout and that I was not really any more productive using DVORAK because the gains in typing speed were being offset by the awkward position of keyboard commands, even simple things like cutting and pasting were long reaches and easy to miss. I reluctantly went through about another week of hell re-learning QWERTY and have been using it exclusively for about 2 months now.
After all the time I wasted learning keyboard layouts, I did learn one valuable lesson: and that is to appreciate a standard.
Really?!
By 1973 Sholes had refined the keyboard layout to something that would be recognizable, albeit slightly jumbled, to a modern typist.
1973 when Bill Gates was still developing BASIC? Not 1873? How long did Mr. Sholes live? Or was that a typo?
;-)
“Which keyboard layout is faster than the QWERTY configuration?”
Answer: None, I’m not going to throw away all my keyboards and learn a new layout. :)
“The one you’re most fluent in.”
Ergonomic
Long time commenter here. Typing in Colemak as we speak.
Informative.How do I view the other geek trivia articles.
Thank You
I’ve been using computers actively since the age of 4, starting with programming from about 10 years old. A couple of years ago I sat down and taught myself the Dvořák layout. Sure, it took a month or two to get my speed back to normal but I’ve never regretted it! The speed gain, the minimized stress and the overall feeling of fluidity was well worth it. And learning QWERTY is like learning to ride a bike, you’ll never really forget how you do it. Only problem is running bootables only supporting QWERTY while all my keyboards are configured to Dvořák..
Trick question and unsound answer. The Dvorak keyboard isn’t actually well substantiated to be faster than regular old QWERTY. http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
Date typo:
“By 1973 Sholes had refined the keyboard layout… ” should read 1873?
Is there a laser keyboard that can re-arrange keys to dvorak and qwerty? that would be awesome to check this by our own.
i think DVORAK keyboard is currently in use in the court rooms.
@rupty: You can view the Trivia category at this link: http://www.howtogeek.com/trivia/
Depends on the language you use. For English users maybe is Dvorak, but for foreign languages sure is not.
I agree with Robbie C. I’ve gone through the trouble of learning Dvorak and although I liked the flow much better, it caused all the same problems Robbie described. I was going to teach my daughter Dvorak (she is 6 ), but I decided that would actually be a handicap since every keyboard she will come in contact with will be QWERTY. I know it’s sad for us efficiency officianodos, but the cost just doesn’t outweigh the benefit.
Why can’t I edit my comment? I never see my mistakes until after I submit my comment :), but the above comment should read “the benefit just doesn’t outweigh the cost”.