The Story Behind the QWERTY Keyboard | Hacker News Reader

The Story Behind the QWERTY Keyboard

blogs.smithsonianmag.com

57 pointsepo62 comments

There's also apparently no real research which shows that Dvorak is actually a more efficient layout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard#Cont...

What does "efficient" mean? If it means the distance your fingers have to travel, Dvorak is way more efficient.

Typing full time on Dvorak for the last 12 years has, I'm convinced, saved me some wrist and finger pain.

Every time I'm forced to jump back onto qwerty for a co-worker or my wife's laptop, I hate it with a passion. It feels like I'm doing finger gymnastics the whole time, rather than actually typing.

I do hear this a lot, and I have no comprehensive experience with Dvorak, but as far as I know there is no real support for the premise that Dvorak makes you type faster, at least. I'll buy that your fingers might not tire as easily.

Here's a study that tried to figure out other possibly optimal keyboard layouts (given lots of explicit assumptions):

http://arcavia.com/kyle/Projects/ProgrammerKeyboard.html

"This was a humongous waste of time. The program to do the analysis is about 700 lines of code, and went though about 3 iterations. I am most disappointed by the lack of benefit offered by a more efficient layout; even when considering a purely optimized layout you only get 21% savings over Qwerty."

Of course, there are other ways we could change keyboards. For example, accepting even more data from your digits could be a useful avenue to explore. 20% improvements are not that spectacular, maybe there's a contraption that is conceptually like a keyboard but is 10x faster (so 12 cps -> 120 cps?).

Alternatively, plover. but then custom dictionaries and bleh..

Are you sure it was Dvorak that saved you the wrist pain? Also, every time you have to type on Qwerty, maybe it feels like doing finger gymnastic because your fingers aren't used to it?

For what is worth I've been finger typing on Qwerty for the last 11 years and I've never had wrist pain. My average is about 90 WPM when doing relaxed typing and over 120 when I stretch myself, and I never felt the need for going faster.

My main problem with Dvorak, that often goes unmentioned: it saves you finger stretches ONLY if you're typing English words, being optimized for English and my native language isn't English.

The keyboard for my native language is still Qwerty. The Dvorak-equivalent on the other hand is completely different from normal Dvorak.

Maybe Qwerty needs a replacement, but Dvorak ain't it.

The distinction between Dvorak and QWERTY when it comes to wrist movements isn't remotely subtle. "This is a test sentence" leaves the home row once on Dvorak and 13 times on QWERTY. That doesn't strike me as atypical. The "flow" of Dvorak is so noticeable that certain words become slightly annoying to type. If we could somehow chart the motion of tendons through your wrist I'm sure I could convince you that the difference is like night and day.

> For what is worth I've been finger typing on Qwerty for the last 11 years and I've never had wrist pain. My average is about 90 WPM when doing relaxed typing and over 120 when I stretch myself, and I never felt the need for going faster.

It's not about the speed (well, I was a hunt-and-peck typist on QWERTY and I switched in order to break the habit, so it was about the speed, just not in that way). It's nice that you don't have any wrist pain, but are you sure that will always be the case? Even a little tiny bit is enough to put me off writing code and both of us will due the bulk of our typing in the future.

> Maybe Qwerty needs a replacement, but Dvorak ain't it.

I agree, but only because the barrier to learning Dvorak is rather large and would apply to any Qwerty replacement. It took concentrated effort over the course of months just in order to reach my speed on QWERTY and I'm not sure it was worth as much effort as it took. Still, I'm fairly certain that if you could snap your fingers and use Dvorak/Colemack/Whatever you would.

The distinction between Dvorak and QWERTY when it comes to wrist movements isn't remotely subtle.

I wonder about the extent to which this is due to the keyboard layout itself. For example, I've been using Kinesis Advantage keyboard for the last couple years (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/further-thoughts-on... for some of my thoughts on it) and find very little wrist movement when using it.

The Advantage is ludicrously expensive for a keyboard, but I also often use it for 40 or more hours per week, and, unlike many default keyboards, its keys don't become sticky or break after a year or two.

I know a few people who have switched to Dvorak, and every time I see them using a computer they seem to grapple with one of a few new inefficiencies that stem from using a layout other than the standard:

* Having difficulty finding symbols because the keycaps no longer match (I don't know why they don't memorize them after all these years)

* Not knowing what mode the keyboard is in to type one's password.

* Having to use someone else's machine and being startled by the switch, or someone uses their keyboard and switches it back.

* On Windows, in particular, the settings seem to flicker back and forth between Qwerty and Dvorak between programs, and between invocations of the same program. No idea why it's not a global system setting. * Have to reset the keymappings in most video games.

I suppose if you were a full-time typist these inefficiencies would be made up for by the increased comfort of the bulk of your day. But for everyone else -- who spend less than 10% of the time typing English sentences -- the standard is probably easier overall.

I tried switching to Dvorak, and encountered exactly those problems. Perhaps if every keyboard instantly switched to Dvorak layout the moment I touched it, then it might have been worth it.

Having to think about which keyboard layout I was using added more time and stress than was ever going to be repaid by the supposed benefits of using Dvorak.

I gave up after about 3 months, reverting purely to using Qwerty.

As a Dvorak (and primarily Mac) user, the switching back and forth on Windows is really annoying for me. I always assumed there must be some system setting that would allow you to switch it for everything.

However, this can be pretty easily mitigated by setting a shortcut to change the keyboard layout (usually CTRL+Space on Windows or CMD+Space on Mac). This way if someone uses my computer I quickly change my keyboard setting in less than a second. No inefficiencies.

In addition, I find myself frequently using a shortcut like this when I need to change back and forth between typing English and Chinese (Dvorak feels very naturally for typing with Hanyu Pinyin - a method of typing Chinese using the Roman Alphabet, so it's not just good for English sentences).

> I suppose if you were a full-time typist these inefficiencies would be made up for by the increased comfort of the bulk of your day.

Lastly, I can verify this on a personal level. I can type 80+ WPM on either QWERTY or DVORAK, but DVORAK is way more comfortable to type on. Would I recommend everyone switch? No. But, I find it to be worth it.

> Having difficulty finding symbols because the keycaps no longer match (I don't know why they don't memorize them after all these years)

That's quite odd. Maybe it's because I'm a programmer, but I had the symbols down just as fast as the letters.

> Not knowing what mode the keyboard is in to type one's password.

There's no reason to have both modes on one's personal machine, and I'm very hesitant to type my password on someone else's. If anything, it actually makes me think more carefully on whether I actually want to do that.

> On Windows, in particular, the settings seem to flicker back and forth between Qwerty and Dvorak between programs, and between invocations of the same program.

Windows keyboard management is a nightmare, but that shouldn't be a reason to avoid the layout. It's a lot smoother on Linux and OS X.

> * On Windows, in particular, the settings seem to flicker back and forth between Qwerty and Dvorak between programs, and between invocations of the same program. No idea why it's not a global system setting.

This becomes particularly obnoxious when Explorer is somehow "partially" switched to a different keyboard, such that minimizing everything sometimes will and sometimes won't switch you back to the layout you're using in Explorer.

Not to mention that it's really easy to accidentally switch layouts. I've certainly done it a number of times.

In the end, it's just far less of a hassle for me to stick to QWERTY on Windows.

I have the symbols memorized, and every keyboard I use regularly I've popped the keycaps off and rearranged them properly.

I have memorized my password in both modes.

All it takes is a quick glance at the keyboard to know which "mode" I'm typing in. Because whenever I type dvorak the keyboard looks Dvorak, when the keyboard looks qwerty it switches my brain that way.

I don't have Qwerty as an option on my computers. It's dvorak only.

> What does "efficient" mean? If it means the distance your fingers have to travel, Dvorak is way more efficient.

When you talk about efficiency, you need to be more specific.

It's not just that Dvorak's superiority over Qwerty for regular typing is very far from being clearly established, Dvorak is terrible for writing code, which requires a lot of non-alphabetical symbols such as {}, (), [], etc...

Dvorak is not terrible for writing code. I don't find it difficult at all. Parens are in the same place as on Qwerty, [] and /= have basically switched places (they're both about equally common), and the only real complaint I have is that ls -l abuses my pinky.

I do not find myself hampered at all when writing code in Dvorak. If anything, it's better since 90% or so of what you write is identifiers, which are basically just short English phrases. Sure, it's possible to make a more optimized keyboard layout for writing code for a specific lannguage, but I find it to be great all-around.

I'm a little sad about where : is (ViM uses it extensively, Go uses it pretty frequently), but alternating hands completely makes up for it (e.g. how often have you typed minimum in code; that by itself can cause RSI in Qwerty).

I once did a scan over our entire code base for []{} vs /=?+, and it came out so close to even as to make no difference. Depending on your language mix, your mileage will vary, but this argument has less general power than people suppose. Dvorak is not terrible for writing code. This is to a large degree because none of /=?+[]{} are in the home row under any layout anyhow. You do lose semicolon under your pinky, but how many QWERTY users are truly touch typing anyhow?

I use an IBM Modem M keyboard (both at home and at work; I have a stack of spares just in case) and I haven't had a problem with RSI. Oddly enough, I find non IBM Model M keyboards a pain to type on, both in annoyance and physical pain. Perhaps there's another dimension not being measured---the physical feel of the keyboard.

Apparently you need "real research" before claiming it's more efficient to put the vowels on the home row rather than scattering them everywhere. It's a good thing that semicolon is right there though, it's totally used more frequently than the letter E.

> Apparently you need "real research" before claiming it's more efficient to put the vowels on the home row rather than scattering them everywhere.

Yes, you do, or how do you know you're not fooling yourself?

Or do you believe in n-rays, too?

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langB.htm

Skepticism is all fine and good, but I don't need to run extensive tests, theorize and test to see if the huge, brown, roaring animal in the woods is a bear. Sometimes, 90% probability is a good enough approximation to go with. Sure, you fool yourself 10% of the time, but you save a lot of time the other 90%.

Based on this, I think we can preliminarily say that putting the "E" on the home row is probably a good idea.

Based on what?

Stephen Colbert coined a word to describe this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

The other end of the spectrum also has a name:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

>Apparently you need "real research" before claiming it's more efficient to put the vowels on the home row rather than scattering them everywhere.

Yes, you do. What's "self evident" about it? How do you know if it's worse to alternate fingers and hit around, compared to stationary clicking for the most common characters?

Yes. There's a reason modern science has mostly supplanted philosophy. To rephrase Occam's razor: things that seem intuitive aren't always true :)

Did you actually test that, or did it just seem intuitive?

Test what?

Isn't Dvorak about comfort instead of speed?

People trained to similar levels on dvorak or qwerty achieve similar speeds, but qwerty has higher levels of pain, RSI, carpal tunnel, etc?

Of course, there are many reasons this could be true that have little to do with the actual layout.

If anyone is interested in comparing Colemak, Dvorak, and Qwerty for themselves, here's a small executable I wrote: https://github.com/bak/keyboard_battle. `gem install keyboard_battle`, then `keyboard_battle anytext.txt` or `keyboard_battle --bundled`. I believe it will work with Ruby 1.8, definitely on 1.9.

It compares both alternation (more is better) and reach (less is better). The main flaw is that it only counts ASCII characters, so may not help much for non-English texts.

Do you have any summarized results to share from using this yourself?

Also, I might be interested in helping you get this to analyze non-ASCII texts.

Sure, here's an example of the output from `keyboard_battle --bundled`:

    texts/alice_underground.txt:
      qwerty:
        alternation_effort: 32118
        reach_effort: 51842
        raw_score: 83960
      dvorak:
        alternation_effort: 24476
        reach_effort: 30312
        raw_score: 54788
      colemak:
        alternation_effort: 29962
        reach_effort: 29403
        raw_score: 59365
    
    texts/declaration_of_independence.txt:
      qwerty:
        alternation_effort: 3049
        reach_effort: 5129
        raw_score: 8178
      dvorak:
        alternation_effort: 2237
        reach_effort: 2693
        raw_score: 4930
      colemak:
        alternation_effort: 2725
        reach_effort: 2469
        raw_score: 5194
    
    texts/gullivers.txt:
      qwerty:
        alternation_effort: 110812
        reach_effort: 181778
        raw_score: 292590
      dvorak:
        alternation_effort: 81836
        reach_effort: 103371
        raw_score: 185207
      colemak:
        alternation_effort: 100074
        reach_effort: 97327
        raw_score: 197401

The raw score is simply the sum of alternation and reach. Without research into whether alternation or reach matters more in the long run, I don't feel like I can provide an aggregate ranking.

Regardless, we can draw some rough conclusions like Dvorak is best on alternation, Colemak is best on reach, and they both blow Qwerty out of the water.

EDIT: Even though more alternation is better, the numbers above represent effort, meaning subsequent keypresses with the same hand, so lower numbers are always better.

As far as contributing goes, if it's possible to reliably support non-ASCII characters without special knowledge of the user's OS config, please take a crack at it (or at least open an issue). Thanks!

I wouldn't say alternation is always better -- in many cases, having successive keys close together is just as good if not better - "There" the first three letters "The" are typed with alternate hands, then the next three - "ere" are also easy to type fast because they're to each other.

I haven't used a dvorak keyboard, but the next to each other keys are really a part of my flow. I really don't know how "<esc>:wq", "<ctrl>a" and so on which are part of programming work would translate to dvorak.

I think you have a good point in that working in "command mode", or "chording", or whatever you want to call it, is different than writing prose. FWIW, I am a Vim user and I think it works great in Dvorak (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4323873). `<ctrl>a` is the same as qwerty, `:wq` is typed on both hands, but as I say in that link, I prefer split hands for `hjkl`, and `wq` is pretty easy too.

To your point I would accept that in command mode, key position, mnemonics, etc. may be more important. In insert mode however I think it is, at the very least, a sound hypothesis that more alternation creates more comfort.

Everyone who has actually made the switch, including myself, knows that is complete bullshit. I may be an extreme case, but my typing speed went from 55 wpm to 140 within a year, and with dramatically reduced pain after long programming sprees.

Strong words will convince nobody!

I've never cared when people tell me that Dvorak is nonsense, or a lie, or whatever. I know it's hard for people, fighting to keep their QWERTY against this enormous onslaught of Dvorak proponents, so I just let them vent. It doesn't actually usually take long.

In fact, I don't even bother putting up a defence any more. Not my fingers, after all...

Yeah, I'm getting to that point as well. It's just disappointing to see posts like this, because many people here would undoubtedly benefit greatly from a switch. And it's not some scheme to replace QWERTY with Dvorak globally, as they probably think it is, because I know that will never happen. I just don't want those curious hackers, as I was myself six years ago, to be discouraged from giving it a shot.

For people interested in alternate mobile keyboards:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-minuum-keyboard-projec...

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/24/kalq/

http://www.swype.com/

http://ok.k3a.me/

http://www.swiftkey.net/

I enjoy using https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.volosyukiv... (type from another keyboard over wifi, through a browser pointed at a tiny server running on android).

Does anyone have a recommendation for an android-compatible bluetooth keyboard that doesn't fold, flop, flip, twist, or perform any of the other actions mentioned in the Bop It manual?

I always thought qwerty (and the other letters) were on top because they wanted to show it off and type "typewriter" as quickly as possible.

If this were true, they would be the home row

the concept of "home row" is part of touch typing, which was invented 15 years after the QWERTY layout

>Keyboard configurations are newly important as we think about how we should type on tablets and other devices. The calling card of the personal computer was the keyboard, and now, we are carrying around pieces of glass on which we simulate the old QWERTY design. Are we going to keep that layout going?

I vote yes. A majority of people have already invested a ton of time learning propper typing style on physical QWERTY keyboards. Translating that existing muscle memory to use a similar style on virtual keyboards is a lot easier than people would guess. After about 30 minutes of practice on a virtual keyboard people normally get their typing speeds to a slower, but adequate level in order to be productive.

An entirely new input system offers very little opportunity for re-use of existing skills.

I feel like knowledge of a desktop QWERTY keyboard has little affect on your mobile usages, aside from knowing which direction your thumb should move towards. Given the fact that (most?) people use only their thumbs when using their cellphone keyboards, I would argue that's reason enough to design a new keyboard based around this type of usage. Right now I think QWERTY is just a crutch for mobile keyboards until someone really makes something stellar.

I personally like message ease. It feels like a step in the right direction.

With a mobile keyboard, it is simple to allow multiple, easily-switchable layouts. So, although QWERTY probably won't go away soon on account of familiarity this is no reason not to introduce an alternative.

"Lies"?! Are they sure that's strong enough? Perhaps "conspiracy" would be more appropriate. The byline could be, "This One Weird Fact That Makes Typists Angry" :)

Funny you should say that, because it indeed was a one-man conspiracy.

(For people that don't know it, conspiracy does not necessarily imply tinfoil, aliens or illuminati -- as an example, covert action to harm others for own benefit will do).

Dvorak, who had money to gain for his alternative keyboard, falsified research and oversold the improvements, to promote his work over Qwerty.

My point was more the strength of language relative to the seriousness of the issue at stake - or, more precisely, the non-issues that aren't really at stake at all. I couldn't count how many people I've met who can type fine on a QWERTY keyboard, but I can count on one finger (one finger... of one hand!) the number of people I've met who can type on a Dvorak keyboard. And that one finger would be counting me. Or maybe you can just assume I've never met myself - and then I don't even need any fingers at all.

(I once worked with a contract programmer, who had been somewhat famous in his own way in the past. Aged mid 40s I guess, so he'd been doing this for 25 years or whatever. Anyway, due to his line of work, and his fame, I'm figuring he'd met a lot of people over this period. And apparently I was the very first person he'd ever met to use the Dvorak layout.)

"Storm in a teacup"? LOL, as they say. Doesn't even begin to describe it...

In that case I agree.

Though, one man's teacup could be another man's sea. I mean, we discus like Vim vs Emacs, or CL vs Clojure all the time, things that are also totally peripheral and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

This reminds me of an old Slashdot article[1], I read a wile ago, which links to an online comic advocating the Dvorak keyboard[2].

1: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/05/06/14/126222/advocatin...

2:http://www.dvzine.org/zine/index.html

The common-letters-spread-far-apart myth never made sense anyways. E, T, S, and A are almost right next to each other, and they're pretty darn common.

Another fine example of what happens when the story is good enough, the truth gets replaced by the myth.

I'm not really sure why, if at all, the origins of QWERTY layout matter.

Because the origin "story" was that Qwerty was designed to make you type slower (to not jam the keys in typewriters) and is thus inherently slower and inferior by design.

(It was indeed made to not jam the keys, but not by making the typist type slower).

This is cool!

This is blogspam. The source[1] is linked right there in the article; please link to that instead.

[1] http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/2013/05/fact-of-ficti...

Can we please stop this?

Journalistic summaries, focusing on certain aspects, are not, never have been and never will be fucking “blogspam”. This complaining is annoying.

call it "needless news aggregation and page view grabbing" then. on a site like hn, that acts as aggregator, one should always link the original source, not some third party piggybacking. those sites fight for page views, so the original creator should be rewarded.

Even if the content is different?! The focus and tone of the summary is completely different, you cannot substitute one with the other! That’s just crazy!

And Smithsonian's is likewise a journalistic retelling of

http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQ...

The pdf doesn't load, but the copy on archive.org works:

http://web.archive.org/web/20111004212938/http://repository....

The Atlantic article wasn't from a blog nor was it spam, but I do see that someone has changed both the title and link. Please stop your infantile, factually incorrect, holier-than-thou name calling, it impresses no one, certainly not me.

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