QWERTY is the Keyboard Standard, but Dvorak Eases Typing Stress

After reading this article, I learned that there were other keyboard layouts out there for English that had been either forgotten or aren’t used at all. The strange thing is that….well… the other layout is superior.

Almost all of us know the QWERTY keyboard layout. You probably have one right now. If you check your keyboard, the first letters in the top left are probably Q,W,E,R,T, and Y, and if so you have a QWERTY keyboard. This is the standard in the U.S., but it has been known to cause pain and stress, as well as carpal tunnel syndrome when not typing in a strange position that requires you to hold your arms up and straighten your back the whole time you’re typing. That’s just annoying. First, I’ll explain the basic history of why we type on keyboards arranged this way.

In the 1860s, a man named Christopher Sholes developed the very first commercially-successful typewriter. He researched many ways to improve typing efficiency with key layouts and eventually created a layout that made the typist very fast after familiarizing themselves with the keyboard. This was very good, but due to technological limitations of the time, typing at such speeds often caused mechanical failures and the machine would lock up. To solve this problem, Sholes rearranged the keys to make it harder to type, thus reducing typing speeds. This eased the strain on the machine, but transferred that hardship to the typist who was now limited to much lower speeds. This became the QWERTY layout almost all of us use.

Leap ahead to the 1930s when a man by the name of August Dvorak became fed up with the sheer inefficiency of the standard QWERTY keyboard and set out to create a layout of his own that was efficient and reduced strain. By now, machines were able to take the stress of faster typing, so the layout he would develop would be perfect for it and suit the needs and wants of modern typists (still talking 1930s here). He studied letter frequencies, physiology, and ergonomics to design what is now known as the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.

Seventy-two years later, Dvorak’s “perfect keyboard” is still hardly used, despite the sheer advantages of efficiency. August Dvorak died poor with his faith in the human race shattered. He once said,

I’m tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race, they simply don’t want to change!

- August Dvorak

Dvorak’s keyboard had hit the wall that most efficiency revolutions hit when they are released to the public: Nobody wants to completely re-learn something they have finally become accustomed to. Dvorak had developed something great that should have revolutionized typing all over the world, but most people didn’t understand why they needed such efficiency in typing, and the people who did were advanced typists who used typewriters for a living, but their businesses didn’t have time to allow their employees to re-learn how to type. Those businesses depended on the great typing abilities of their employees and could not afford to allow those employees to completely give up the old way of typing (at least for a time– in order to learn the new system).

This sort of failure is not extremely unusual; just look at Betamax by Sony, HD-DVD by Toshiba, PowerPC Processor architecture, the Geodesic Dome, and the Dymaxion car and house. Some of those were superior in many ways, but just never caught on to the public.

Dvorak’s Keyboard is superior to the QWERTY and AZERTY keyboards. One of the greatest innovations was putting all of the most common consonants on the right and the vowels on the left hand side. Because almost every English word has a vowel, your fingers have to jump all across the keyboard to type most words. With the logical layout of Dvorak’s, you can type many words in one or two rows, thus reducing finger movement and causing less wrist strain and faster typing.

Don’t kid yourself by thinking this keyboard is only for people with wrist pains because of using the computer a lot; anyone who wants to squeeze more productivity out of their time on the computer would benefit from this keyboard.

So do you want to learn how to use one of these funky keyboards that almost nobody has heard of? Well, here are some tips that will allow you to learn faster, easier, and keep most of your QWERTY keyboard skills without having to re-learn them.

• Don’t use a QWERTY keyboard when you’re learning Dvorak’s. This will mess up your mind’s way of learning by automatically reverting back to its familiar and already-established QWERTY skills. I know it seems hard and at times impossible, but try your best. If you are a student or get summer vacation (or any other long vacation), then learn Dvorak’s for your personal typing and then when you learn it, use both. It is recommended that you don’t use QWERTY for at least three months, but it varies depending on how quickly you catch on to Dvorak’s keyboard layout.
• Use an on screen keyboard or a printed keyboard for reference. If your computer can have an on-screen Dvorak’s keyboard, then go for it. If it can’t or you don’t want to sacrifice screen space, then print off a picture of Dvorak’s keyboard (just Google Image search it) and tape it next to your monitor for reference when you type. This will help you learn how to type without looking at the keyboard.
• Use a touch typing tutor that supports Dvorak’s Layout. One very good example would be Keybr. It automatically generates words for you to type and supports multiple keyboard layouts. Best of all, it’s online and completely free!
• If you already know how to type on a QWERTY or AZERTY keyboard well, refer back to the tricks you used to learn that if they are different from the tips above.
• Don’t stress about it. Learning to type well on a totally different keyboard takes some time, but if you don’t worry about it, you’ll get the hang of it in a couple days, and in a week or so you’ll start to get comfortable typing on this new keyboard.

Will I ever use this near-forgotten layout? Probably. I might consider buying an external Dvorak’s to plug into my laptop because the typing speed increases are fairly promising, as well as the great reduce in strain. There are some studies that say Dvorak’s does not help at all, but many people (as well as other studies) disagree. It’s also common sense if you think that the keys you use most are closer to your fingers, you’ll save time and effort from not having to move your fingers up and down and left and right and halfway diagonally just to type one word.