Have you ever wondered why the keys on your keyboard were in such a strange, random order? If you’re like me, you may have wondered why they weren’t simply designed in ABC-order. Well there’s a dirty little secret behind the standard keyboard layout commonly known as QWERTY: it was designed to make you type slower.
Why, you ask? What cruel twist of fate has conspired to reduce your productivity without your knowledge? When typists were just getting good at using old-school typewriters, this keyboard layout was designed because they were typing so fast that the little hammers that pounded the ink onto the paper were getting jammed together.
Don’t despair! There is an alternative. When I was in college, a friend introduced me to an alternate keyboard layout called Dvorak. The Dvorak layout puts all of the vowels and most commonly used consonants on and around home row where then can be pushed most efficiently. It took me a couple years to become just as comfortable with Dvorak as I am with QWERTY, but I did not spend any concentrated time practicing it. I would switch back and forth between the two when I got tired of typing so slowly my friends thought I had left the computer for good while waiting for their next message. When I went to work full time I buckled down and set it up permanently. Now I’m happy to say that I love using Dvorak, and I want to help as many other people make the switch as I can.
What I found worked best for me was to print out this image and place it directly above my keyboard. This way you do not have to look at the keys which are blocked by your hands, but you still have a reference. In consideration for my boss who occasionally needed to use my computer, I also pried up all the keys and popped them back in the Dvorak layout so that he could peck out things when needed. I then scratched some notches for the home row index finger keys.
You can learn a lot more about Dvorak by clicking on this link. There you will find pro’s and con’s as well as other ways to learn Dvorak and some of its history. If anyone feels the urge to give this new layout a try, I would love to hear from you. Please post comments!
