Quezi

Dvorak Keyboard (photo by acme - CC-BY)

Most of us are typing on keyboards that use a layout invented before 1870, before touch-typing was invented. We call it the Qwerty layout, because those are the first few keys on the top row of letters.

Contrary to popular rumor, the Qwerty layout was not designed to slow down typists. It was designed to place frequent pairs of letters in positions where the keys were less likely to jam when typing the letters in quick succession. The slowing-down was just an unfortunate side-effect.

An alternative keyboard layout was patented in 1936, having been developed by August Dvorak (pronounced duh-VOR-ack) and his brother-in-law William Dealey. It’s also sometimes called the American Simplified Keyboard, and is designed according to physiological principles, of which the most important are:

• Most of the typing should be done on the “home row” (the middle row of letters), so common letters should be placed there
• The most common pairs of letters should be typed by alternating between the two hands, and certainly not with adjacent fingers

The result is a keyboard with the vowels on the left of the center row, and common consonants on the right. Ten times as many words can be typed using just the home row keys, compared to the home row keys on a Qwerty keyboard. (Do you remember practicing sentences like “alas a lass has a salad” when you were learning Qwerty?). The movements of the fingers away from the home row are about a third as much for Dvorak as for Qwerty. This can save a working typist many miles of finger-travel per day. Users speak highly of the comfort of using the Dvorak layout.

Dvorak is certainly fast. The world’s fastest typist, Barbara Blackburn who died in 2008, used a Dvorak keyboard and sustained 150 words per minute for 50 minutes. She peaked at 212 wpm.

So why doesn’t everyone use it?

Although it’s a better layout, not everyone is convinced that it’s enough better to overcome the inertia of switching, and the huge installed base of Qwerty keyboards.

Dvorak typing is easy to try. Most modern computers can switch keyboard layouts very easily, but there’s an even easier way to try it. You can go to the Dvorak Anywhere web page where you will find a picture of a Dvorak keyboard and a text box. Using the picture as a guide, type on your own keyboard using the Dvorak layout and the text will appear on the web page (you can then copy-and-paste it).

If you like it, you can set your computer to Dvorak. But what if you are using other people’s computers? It’s easy enough to change the keyboard layout whenever you use their computer. (Don’t forget to change it back when you’re finished, or you’ll leave them very confused.) Another approach is to save the Dvorak Anywhere web page onto a memory stick. You can then use the browser on any computer to access that page for Dvorak typing.

Famous Dvorak users include Bram Cohen (inventor of BitTorrent), Matt Mullenweg (lead developer of the WordPress software that powers this website) Terry Goodkind (author of The Sword of Truth) and Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple Computer).

A programmer version of Dvorak is also available, that makes it easier to type the interminable braces, brackets, ampersands and other symbols that are found in popular programming languages such as C and Java.