I love keyboards. I use the Dvorak keyboard layout. It has the same physical structure as your QWERTY keyboard, but the keys themselves are linked to different letters. Typing “I hate this” on a Dvorak keyboard in QWERTY would result in “G jakd kjg;”.

The QWERTY layout was created in 1868 when Christopher Sholes developed the typewriter. (Its name comes from the first six letters of the upper row of characters, qwerty.) The typebars (keys) on his typewriter would jam, so he took the alphabetical layout and moved frequently used pairs of letters far apart, producing what you see on your keyboard. Sholes was a great guy, the precursor to the modern keyboard, but there is no excuse for his sloppy, almost random movement of the keys to create the QWERTY abomination. (He even created a better layout a few years later, recognizing his mistake, but nobody used it.)

When touch-typing was developed, people used the same keyboard layout that had become ubiquitous.

Dr. August Dvorak came around in the 1920s and decided the QWERTY keyboard was horrible for touch-typing. He created a new keyboard layout, using the same physical keys but switching the actual letters, in 1932. He studied letter frequencies, but he also looked at two-letter sequences: typing the common “ce” on QWERTY is done by awkwardly using the same finger to jump over the home row, but typing “ce” on Dvorak uses fingers of opposite hands for maximum speed. His keyboard is considered faster, easier to learn, and more comfortable to type with. It alternates letters between hands (all the vowels are on the left hand home row, the common consonants on the right), puts the most common letters on the home row and the least common on the lower row, and uses inboard stroke flow (typing moves from the edges of the keyboard inward).

The so-called Dvorak keyboard is now on practically every computer in the United States. You can set your keyboard to used Dvorak with (in Windows) a simple change in the Control Panel and still use the physical keyboard you currently own. Yet QWERTY remains the standard, even though Dvorak has been found to increase your typing speed by around 40% while reducing the dangers of RSI (repetitive strain injury).

The Dvorak layout, by the way, is:

‘,.pyfgcrl/=
AOEUidHTNS-
;qjkxbmwvz

Where QWERTY has the semicolon on the home row (a travesty!), Dvorak puts the extremely common “s”. How could this not be a better layout?!

I, personally, switched to Dvorak three years ago in seventh grade. I now type at about 120 WPM, with an accuracy rate of 95% or higher.

Yet I am forced to use the QWERTY layout at school. Most other people use it daily for work or schoolwork, unaware of the superior Dvorak keyboard. I hate the QWERTY keyboard!

Credits: Michael G