Qwerty vs. Dvorak

As you all have known, I have been a big, huge, nerdy, geek for the Dvorak keyboard. For those of you who live Normal Lives and have absolutely no interest in the geekiness of the Dvorak keyboard, I must tell you all about it. . . .

. . . The Dvorak keyboard was developed in the late 1930s when electric typewriters were introduced as a more efficient layout to the standard "qwerty" layout of manual typewriters. Mr. Dvorak studied the frequency of the most commonly-used letters in typing and placed them in a layout that would enable the typist's hands to strike these letters on a typewriter keyboard in a much more efficient manner. 

The most-used consonants were placed in the right hand on the home row with all the vowels in the left hand on the same row. The least-used letters (q, j, k, x, b, m, w, v, z) were place on the bottom row. 

Also, think of this -- drum your fingers on the desk. You go from the little finger to the index finger. That's a natural hand motion. Dvorak arranged the most-common letter combinations to employ this natural finger-motion.  

Yes, I'm a complete geek when it comes to the Dvorak keyboard. As a pianist who is continually thinking of the best strategy for playing a difficult passage with one's fingers, the Dvorak keyboard enables me to type and express myself in the most efficient manner. 

I've spent the past couple of years re-learning to type from "qwerty" to "Dvorak".  I was an awfully speedy typist, even at the age of 14, when I could bang out an impressive 60 wpm on an old, manual Royal typewriter. I'm now closing in on 80 wpm on Dvorak.

Here's a couple of videos for you so that you can see the difference in finger-motion; between typing on a standard "qwerty" keyboard and on a Dvorak layout.

First, here is my friend, Miss Healthypants, who is extremely fast, typing a paragraph of standard words on a qwerty keyboard. (Notice the finger-hopping and excessive finger motion that is required.)

Now, here I am, typing the same paragraph. Notice how much less finger-motion there is to type the same thing. With the Dvorak layout, 70 percent of all typing is done on the 'home' row. Also, more of the typing is done with the right hand and with the index and third fingers; not with than with the left hand and with the fourth and fifth fingers. The left hand hardly has to move about at all. Also notice how seldom any of the fingers type on the bottom row at all; hardly ever. (It's a pretty ingenious layout -- don't get me started.)

Can you see the difference?

Isn't the just about the most elegant thing ever?

Yes, I am a Dvorak geek. I would never expect anyone to spend two years re-learning how to type.

Sure, it's geeky and nerdy.  

But for me, every time I type on a keyboard, I get to experience a little thrill; some excitement at doing so. 

How many of you have that pleasure?

iPhone

I've always had a "thing" for phones ever since I was a little kid. Now that my carrier, Verizon, will be servicing iPhones, I'm thinking of getting one. However, I'll be making a few changes to mine.

For one thing, I use a Dvorak keyboard instead of Qwerty. And yes, iPhone has an app for that:

Also, I love the retro appeal of rotary-dial phones. There's an app for that too.

Won't it be cool to use an iPhone as a rotary dial phone? Can't you just see me on the subway, dialing away on my phone?

Dvorak Update

It's been a long time since I've provided you, dear readers, with an update on my typing skills with the Dvorak keyboard. I'm sure you've all been wondering how it was coming along.

For those of you who don't know, the Dvorak keyboard uses a different layout than the standard "Qwerty" typing keyboard. It was designed in the 1930s when the first electric typewriters were used so that typists would utilize a lot less finger-motion.

Here's the layout:

When typing on this layout, all "finger-hopping" is eliminated and most of the typing is done on the home row. It's really pretty remarkable. As a pianist, it really appeals to me.

Try it. Imagine your index fingers on the "u" and the "h" on the layout above. Now type the word "something" or "these" or "months" and you'll see how little finger-motion is involved. Try typing your name, too. Isn't that incredible?

So, I took a typing test today.

Drum roll, please. . . . .

77 words per minute with no mistakes.

I realize that being so enthralled with the Dvorak keyboard is just about the geekiest thing ever.

That's fine. I'll look good in my Argyle sweater-vest while typing with lots less finger-motion.

A Very Special Dvorak Update

For those of you who have been following my blog, you may recall that I’ve been making the transition from using a standard “qwerty” typewriting keyboard to the Dvorak layout.
Here it is:

I’ve practiced just about every day, trying to pick up my speed and I’m averaging about 60-65 words per minute on Dvorak. That’s still not up to my Qwerty speed, but all good things will come eventually.

Anyway, I’ve been awfully excited over this endeavor but no one else seems to share my enthusiasm or interest in the Dvorak keyboard.

I was all alone in this exciting endeavor and I really wanted someone I could share this with.
But who?

There had to be someone. . . .

How about my typing teacher from high school?

I had taken Typing I and Typing II from her during my freshman and sophomore years and I was one of her better students. Surely, she would be interested in my conversion to the Dvorak keyboard!

I looked her up. She still had the same phone number. (Her son and I had been friends since the 5th grade.)

So, yes, I called up my typing teacher from 35 years ago so that I could have someone to talk about the Dvorak keyboard with.

She was now in her early seventies, remembered me well, and was happy to hear from me. I told her how valuable her typing courses had been. (and they were – in Typing II, we learned how to type business letters, college research papers, resumes, cover letters and the like.)

I told her about the Dvorak keyboard and, yes, she found that interesting.

Then, she told me that her husband and her son both passed away back in 1991.
Wow.
I listened and it was really nice to hear her open up to me and tell me how difficult all that had been.

Then, she told me that last year, she was diagnose with advanced breast cancer and how difficult all the past months of chemotherapy had been.

She told me that she’s been seeing someone now for four years in another town and how supportive he’s been.

My typing teacher from 35 years ago and I talked on the phone for over two hours. We really connected. I ended up calling to tell her about the stupid Dvorak keyboard and, instead, I ended up with a new friend.

I agreed to stop by for a visit when I go down to Texas next month. I’m really looking forward to it.

(I’ll be sure to bring my Dvorak keyboard.)

Dvorak Update

I realize that no one is really interested in my conversion to the Dvorak keyboard. I've been told this by concerned friends and relatives who love me -- thank you very much.

But I crossed a little milestone today -- 60 wpm with no errers.

Qwerty vs Dvorak

I know I'm totally geeking out with this Dvorak thing, but I have here for you two short videos that compare typing on a Qwerty keyboard to a Dvorak keyboard.

Miss Healthypants and I are both typing the same text -- a few lines of commonly-used words. Here is the lovely MHP clipping along at about 70 wpm on a standard Qwerty keyboard:



And then here I am typing the same text on a Dvorak keyboard, albeit slower at about 50 wpm. I think you will see that typing on a Dvorak keyboard uses a lot less finger-motion -- that's because 70% of the typing is done on the home row. Also, the right hand types a lot more of the letters in Dvorak (a good thing for most right-handed people)



Isn't that cool?

Like I said, I'm totally geeking out.

Dvorak Update

It’s been about six weeks since I decided to try “converting” to the Dvorak keyboard and I thought I’d give you an update. I just know you’ve all been waiting on pins and needles, ever so anxious to know how it’s been going.

For those of you who don’t leap on my blog every day breathlessly devouring every word I write, I’ll tell you a little bit about this Dvorak thing of which I speak.

It’s a different keyboard layout that is much more efficient to type on. Your fingers actually travel 80 percent less using Dvorak because of the way it’s laid out.

Here it is:

I decide to learn this keyboard and I will admit that it’s been a very interesting experience so far.

First of all, it’s been incredibly difficult to un-learn 36 years of qwerty typing, especially since I could purtle along at 80 – 100 wpm. (Yes, I am bragging)

I had read all these reports claiming that Dvorak was so incredibly easy to learn and that you’d soon be blazing away faster than you had ever typed before.

Even though I've been practicing about two hours a day, that wasn’t happening with me and I finally figured out why.

I’m old.

I’ve probably been typing a lot longer than any of the people who wrote these claims. Also, they probably learned “keyboarding” rather than typing. Additionally, I doubt than any of them had ever been bona fide typists in the classical sense.

I learned actual typing on an old-fashioned manual typewriter where you really had to bang some letters. Perhaps that had “engrained” the qwerty layout much more deeply into the recesses of the old gray matter.

At any rate, it has really been a challenge but one that I’ve really enjoyed taking on. I can now touch-type at a blinding 30 wpm using Dvorak. What’s really interesting is that I’ve lost the ability to type in qwerty.

I feel like I'm in limbo; an astronaut on the dark side of the moon.

I thought about giving it all up until I read an essay from a woman who could type at 100+ wpm on qwerty and made the change. She said that after two months she could type at 50 wpm and had regained her speed back after three months.

I’m pretty much on track.

So, why am I spending so much time and energy learning this?

OOOooo! I’m so glad you asked!

There are several reasons:

1. It’s similar to learning another language, only this one involves finger-action. For me, that’s like playing the piano.

2. I love the way it feels to type on the Dvorak keyboard. Take a look at it again.

Now imagine your index fingers on the ‘u’ and he ‘h’ and type the word “months” and “these”. Isn’t that the most incredible thing EVER???

3. Typing on a Dvorak keyboard is different from the norm. The normative of anything has never been appealing to me.

4. I’d like to eventually get my speed well above 100 wpm which is pretty impossible to do on qwerty. However, the Guinness world record is held by Barbara Blackburn at 212 wpm which she was able to do using a Dvorak keyboard.

Frankly, I’d love a job as a transcriptionist. Maybe if I become really proficient at Dvorak, I can get a part time job doing just that and working from home.

Sigh . . . we all have dreams. Mine just happen to be excruciatingly nerdy.

I’ll keep you posted.

My New Toy

Ta-daaahh!

Notice anything different about this keyboard?

All the letters are in different spaces. I got my Dvorak keyboard in the mail yesterday. (It was only $19.95)

I am making progress in learning the new layout, slow but sure. It really is similar to learning a new language. From what I’ve read, you can type a lot faster on Dvorak with 80% less finger motion due to the layout.

I have my reasons for learning this which I’ll go into later. I’m not just being an incredibly geeky nerd. This time.

Dvorak Keyboard . . . The Story Continues

I am having an absolute blast learning to type on the Dvorak keyboard layout. It’s amazing how the mind works and learns new things.

I’ve been a pretty good typist on the standard QWERTY layout for 35 years. So, retraining the mind and fingers to do something completely different is really a challenge, but one that I’m enjoying wholeheartedly.

I think I might become an evangelist for the Dvorak keyboard. It just makes so much sense. When typing on Dvorak, you use a lot less finger-motion and your most-often used letter combinations just seem to “fall” under your fingers. As a pianist, I can truly appreciate it.

So far, I’m just on the eight fingers of the “home row”

Here’s the Dvorak keyboard, by the way.

So, using “a,o,e,u” on the left hand and “h,t,n,s” on the right, I’m practicing with the following sentences:

Eat the toast at ten to noon
The Taos sun shone as hot as Santa Anna
Anthea assesses the estate at South Tahoe
Hotshot Hanna uses these shoes that Shannon soon sees
At noon on the teahouse Aunt Tess hushes the nauseous host
Tess Sutton notates the tenuous state that southeast Houston has seen
Ethan Ness attests to these Tennessee Senate OSHA statues to shun Utah

The biggest challenge so far is using the “s” with the pinky of the right hand. For some reason, I just can’t “get” that.

They say that you can double your typing speed using Dvorak and I can certainly see how that would be possible.

I just hope I can get this old grey matter to do it after all these years.

I’ll keep you posted.

Leaving QWERTY Behind

When I was a freshman in high school, I really enjoyed taking “Typewriting I”. By that time, I was fast becoming an incredibly geeky pianist, so learning to type was quite similar to playing the piano. For me, typing uses the same brain functions as sight-reading on the piano.

That was 36 years ago that I learned to type. We had these ancient manual typewriters back then (no electric ones) and I could really bang some letters. I couldn't do anything remotely athletic, but I could type.

When I was 13, many of my friends earned extra money by mowing lawns or baling hay during the summer. Me? I earned extra money by typing the minutes for the local garden club. That right there should have been an indication of things to come.

After that, I learned 10-key by touch. Again, it was really enjoyable for me. One of my most favorite jobs was as a proof operator at a bank. You just sat there all day and encoded the amounts of the checks as fast and accurately as possible. I loved it.

So, I was pretty excited recently to learn about the Dvorak keyboard layout. Have you heard of that?

It was developed back in the 1930s as an alternative to the traditional “qwerty” layout that we normally use. The qwerty layout was developed to keep typewriter hammers from jamming. For example, the “t” and the “h” are used by different hands so you won’t press them very fast; if you did, the hammers would jam on the old manual typewriters.

Once electric typewriters were developed, this was no longer an issue. So, Mr. Dvorak developed a keyboard layout that would be conducive to speed and ease. On the Dvorak keyboard, one’s fingers use a lot less motion to type the most common combinations of letters.

Here it is:

Now, take a close look. Imagine your fingers on the “home row”. Just imagine how fast you could type words like “the, that, then, those”. The most commonly used letters are on the home row, the next common are above that and the least common below it.

Cool!

Now, drum your fingers on the table. Notice how you drum inwards, from the little finger to the index. Dvorak noticed that and laid out the keyboard so that the most commonly-used letter combinations employ the same motion.

That's so cool.

The world’s fastest typist, Barbara Blackburn, was never a very good typist on the qwerty keyboard. But once she learned the Dvorak layout, she achieved a world record at 212 wpm on the Dvorak keyboard.

Cool!

My fastest typing speed (with 98% accuracy) is 81 wpm. However, I’ve definitely hit a wall at that speed and can’t seem to get any faster. I would love to learn this Dvorak layout and really burn up a keyboard. It would be like learning to play “Flight of the Bumble Bee”.

Oh, and if you want to change your PC keyboard to the Dvorak layout, just follow these nine simple steps.

1. Select Start->Control Panel.

2. If you're viewing by categories (the default), click Regional Options.

3. Click Language Options.

4. Click the Languages tab

5. Click the Details button

6. Click the Add button

7. Under Keyboard Layout/IME, select United States-Dvorak then click OK.

8. If you want it to be default, select United States-Dvorak again in the Default input language pull-down

9. Click OK to close the control panel.

I did this and now the quotation mark button is all messed up when I go back to qwerty which kinda sucks.

Oh, and if you want to learn Dvorak, here’s a nifty tutorial. Click here.

I’m definitely going to give it a try, as I’ve always enjoyed things that are different from the norm.

I know it's pretty strange to get this excited over a keyboard. Sometimes my level of nerdiness scares me.