From QWERTY to Dvorak

Scattered keyboard keys

Table of Contents

Introduction

QWERTY is the standard keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. It was developed and refined over the course of a decade (1870s) by multiple parties. There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the rationale for key placement.

Dvorak is another keyboard layout, that was designed to be a faster and more ergonomic alternative to QWERTY for the English language. It was completed in 1932, by August Dvorak and William Dealy, who approached the problem from a deeply scientific and research-driven perspective. They attended seminars on the science of motion, studied the physiology of the hand, reviewed slow-motion films of typists, and studied the frequency of letters and letter combinations in the English language.

Dvorak, like QWERTY ([1], [2]), has multiple, related variants. Here is what the dominant version (Dvorak Simplified Layout) looks like:

Dvorak keyboard layout

The Dvorak Philosophy

Dvorak was founded on the following principles:

  1. Letters should be typed by alternating between hands.
  2. The most common letters and bigrams should be typed by the strongest fingers.
  3. The least common letters should be on the bottom row.
  4. The right hand should do more of the typing.
  5. Digraphs should not be typed with adjacent fingers.
  6. Stroking should generally move from the edges of the keyboard to the middle.

Explanations

  1. Alternating between hands makes typing more rhythmic, increases speed, reduces error, and reduces fatigue. English sentences predominantly consist of words and spaces. Spaces can be typed by whichever hand was not used to type the last character, so can always facilitate alternating between hands. Most English words consist of sequences of small groups of vowels and consonants (roughly the regular expression \(([\)aeiou\(]^*[\)b-df-hj-np-tv-z\(]^*)+\)). Notice that the vowels are on the left side of the Dvorak layout, and the most used consonants are on the right. Thus, one should alternate hands every time the group type (vowel or consonant) changes, which is often, since the groups tend to be of length one or two!
  2. Characters on the home row are typed with the most strength, speed and comfort, since this is where the fingers are supposed to naturally reside. About 70% of letter keyboard strokes on Dvorak are done on the home row.
  3. It is more comfortable to extend upwards to the top row than reach downwards to the bottom row. About 22% and 8% of letter keyboard strokes occur on the top and bottom rows respectively.
  4. Most people are right-handed, so presumably are stronger, faster and more comfortable using their right hand over their left.
  5. Typing digraphs with the same hand violates the first principle. Typing with adjacent fingers is the worst-case of this violation, since it is assumed to be the least comfortable. Note that many members of the list of English digraphs are not typed with adjacent fingers.
  6. When tapping fingers on a table, it is easier to go from little finger to index than vice versa (known as inboard stroke flow).

QWERTY vs. Dvorak

Here are some interesting metrics to compare and contrast QWERTY and Dvorak.

Dvorak brags 70% of letter keyboard strokes on the home row, while QWERTY has a mere 32%. Consequently, Dvorak requires only 63% of the finger movement of QWERTY, increasing relative accuracy, comfort and speed with Dvorak.

56% of QWERTY typing is done by the left hand, while only 44% is done by the left hand in Dvorak. While this is argued to be a positive for Dvorak (the fourth principle), I actually think it might be a negative. I have observed that I experience more discomfort and pain in my right hand than my left. I realize that this is because I, like most people, use my mouse with my right hand. Generic use of a computer often entails hopping between mouse and keyboard, which I believe to be the cause of my suffering. Thus, there is a case to be made for the left hand doing more of the typing.

QWERTY requires hurdles for many more words than Dvorak. A hurdle is the uncomfortable phenomenon where a single finger must type consecutive letters by alternating between the top and bottom rows. For example, try typing "minimum" with QWERTY. However, note that number of words is only a good metric if there is a uniform distribution of words within the English language. This is not true according to Zipf's law, hence further investigation is required to understand how many more hurdles we should expect to type with QWERTY vs. Dvorak. More explicitly, it may be the case that the few Dvorak words with hurdles are much more common in English corpora than the abundant QWERTY words with hurdles. I investigated this and verified that one should expect to type several more hurdles with QWERTY than Dvorak.

QWERTY utilizes only one hand for around 3,300 words, but this practically never happens with Dvorak. Recall that all vowels are typed with the left hand in Dvorak, and the most common consonants are typed with the right hand. Practically all words contain at least one vowel and one consonant. Thus, alternating keystrokes between the hands almost always occurs. QWERTY lacks this structural separation.

Nevertheless, observe that longer words often consist of lengthy substrings of consonants (for example, "strengths", "thoughtful"), causing one to predominantly type longer words with their right hand. This might explain why 56% of typing is done by the right hand on Dvorak.

QWERTY is often assumed to be the keyboard layout of choice by interface designers and system administrators. Consequently, it can be inconvenient to use Dvorak for auxiliary keyboard functionality that was designed to be convenient for the QWERTY layout — think keyboard shortcuts and PC games that use WASD controls. Furthermore, it can be difficult to gain sufficient privileges to change a computer's keyboard settings to use Dvorak (for example, when using public computers in libraries).

Keyboard Layouts, Software, and Hardware

Wikipedia does a great job of explaining how a computer receives information from a keyboard: "modern computer keyboards are designed to send a scancode to the operating system (OS) when a key is pressed or released: this code reports only the key's row and column, not the specific character engraved on that key. The OS converts the scancode into a specific binary character code using a "scancode to character" conversion table, called the keyboard mapping table. This means that a physical keyboard may be dynamically mapped to any layout without switching hardware components—merely by changing the software that interprets the keystrokes."

More concisely, a pre-processing occurs on the hardware events, affecting all downstream reads by other software on the inputted keystrokes. Thus, ordinary QWERTY keyboard hardware is usable for Dvorak, so long as one can specify the "scancode to character" conversion table. Since Dvorak simple american is built into every modern operating system, this is practically always the case.

My Experience

I was first introduced to Dvorak when I discovered that one of my college professors uses Dvorak (shoutout Shotaro Makisumi). I was already excited by the idea of workflow optimization after using Vim for a year or so. After doing some research, I was convinced that the advantages of Dvorak outweighed the disadvantages. I also didn't have any time-sensitive work to do for an entire summer. With that, I changed my keyboard layout, made an account on TypingClub, and dove into the first exercise.

At first, I really struggled. It took a lot of discipline to suck at touch typing every day for a few weeks. I would try to perfect every exercise, repeating some exercises dozens of times. Nonetheless, slowly but surely, my fingers were learning how to type again. The small victories felt really good. TypingClub rewards you nicely throughout your journey, reminding you to celebrate when you might otherwise forget to.

By the end of the summer, my Dvorak typing skills were in a place that I was happy with. I was typing at my original speed of 80 words per minute, with the big difference that my fingers were not in pain and exhausted after two minutes of typing at that speed, as was the case for me with QWERTY. However, after not typing in QWERTY on my computer for three months, I actually forgot how to type in QWERTY, despite typing in QWERTY with my thumbs on my phone throughout.

Conclusions and Insights

Upon writing, I have been a devout Dvorak user for just over a year, and stand by the following:

  • I am very comfortable typing in Dvorak, and type at higher speeds (105 words per minute) than I was able to in QWERTY (80 words per minute)
  • Though my fingers were in pain and exhausted after two minutes of typing at 80 words per minute in QWERTY, this is certainly partly due to my imperfect QWERTY typing technique. I did not learn QWERTY solely by touch typing, and consequently experience increased strain through unnecessary finger movement.
  • It is nice that people can't easily use my computer, but it is inconvenient that I cannot easily use theirs
  • My Dvorak capabilities are almost purely due to muscle memory — I have basically no visual conceptualization of where the keys are. While this is part of the philosophy of touch typing, sometimes it takes me a bit of time to find obscure keys in unfamiliar situations (i.e. '?' when using a new software where '?' has some novel functionality). This problem shouldn't affect QWERTY users, since they can just look down at their keyboard in such moments of confusion, and find the key that their mind cannot
  • I generally have no problems with keyboard shortcuts. I have noticed that most shortcuts are chosen as a result of semantics (i.e. 'C' for copy) rather than because they are ergonomic on QWERTY (and potentially unergonomic on Dvorak)
  • I generally have no problems with changing keyboard settings to use Dvorak, even when using computers with restricted permissions.
  • Although it is easy to change the current keyboard layout for a computer, say from QWERTY to Dvorak, it is annoying to also make a keyboard layout persist after the computer is restarted or shut down. This is especially annoying when I have to hop between computers for work, which default to QWERTY after restarts and losses of connection
  • To use Dvorak on iPhones, third-party software must be installed. I haven't bothered to set up and use Dvorak on my iPhone, since I find the typing experience in QWERTY fine. Furthermore, typing solely with my thumbs has a different muscle memory to typing with my fingers on a physical keyboard; although I've lost the ability to type in QWERTY on my computer, I can type in QWERTY on my iPhone
  • Autocorrect is sometimes built to only recognise QWERTY errors
  • When learning Dvorak, I should have also touch typed in QWERTY. For the past week I have been touch typing with both daily, to retain my Dvorak muscle memory and to regain my QWERTY muscle memory. It has been working very well so far.

Sources

Post image: "black keyboard on white background" by Sofia, hosted by Unsplash, license

Introduction
The Dvorak Philosophy
QWERTY vs. Dvorak
Keyboard Layouts, Software, and Hardware
My Experience
Conclusions and Insights