Everyone who learned to type in school learned QWERTY. It’s so ubiquitous you might not even know what it is. Aside from being a poor password choice, it is the characters in the top row of your keyboard from left to right. Therefore QWERTY is the name of the specific arrangement of keys or keyboard layout.
If you’re reading this, however, you probably know that. But do you know any others?
Yes, in the UK they have the British pound sign and a few other small differences, or in Spain they have a key for ñ.
But those are relatively small differences.
Instead, without changing any hardware, check your computer’s language settings or your phones keyboard settings and find that even without changing languages there are multiple layout options available.
So what about these other layout options?
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? Well, sure. And flying coach will get you there all the same, but it sure isn’t as comfortable back there.
With just a little bit of time and effort, you can learn a more efficient keyboard layout. Will you be able to type faster? Probably, with practice. Will typing require less finger movement? Yes.
Huh?
That’s right. In purpose-built layouts such as COLEMAK, WORKMAN, and DVORAK were designed to reduce strain on the typists hands and make the task easier, faster and safer.
OJ Bucao over at https://workmanlayout.org/ covers a few comparison points of these few layouts. He finds a few notable differences between the alternatives. Take finger travel for example and find the three alternatives all require considerably less movement for the same word production.
My Choice
I chose to learn DVORAK which I primarily use to this day. I can comfortably exceed 80 wpm.
My major selling point was when I got up to about 10 wpm and I felt my hands flow into words. The way the letters flow across the hands and predominantly stay in the home row was poetry. It was like learning a new language. Typing a word for the first time in DVORAK was exciting. I felt like I had been typing the hard way my whole life.
My favorite analogy is imagine if cars had the steering wheel behind the passenger’s seat the driver had to reach back and across to control the car. Sounds uncomfortable, right? If this were the norm, drivers might be resistant to switching because that’s just what they were used to, or perhaps it was too difficult to learn a new way to drive.
Yes, there are some drawbacks but I believe learning a more comfortable layout has already paid for itself and I am glad to know I am someone who is willing to invest a little time and effort in improving my quality of life over the long run.
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