By the end of the study their Dvorak speeds were 74 percent faster than their qwerty speeds, and their accuracies had increased by 68 percent. Dvorak attributed the increase in accuracy to the fact that on keyboard, that the most common digraphs two-letter combinations, such as "ed" in English would occur with a minimum of "hurdling" having to jump over a key as if it were a hurdle , and would use stronger fingers rather than weaker ones.
Dvorak estimated that the fingers of an average typist in his day travelled between 12 and 20 miles on a qwerty keyboard; the same text on a Dvorak keyboard would require only about one mile of travel. Dvorak believed that hurdling and awkward keystroke combinations were responsible for most of the common errors typists make.
His list of the most common typing errors on the Dvorak and qwerty keyboards is interesting. Unfortunately, subsequent investigation has shown that at best, the experiments in the Navy study were biased, and at worst, fabricated.
See Typing Errors , from the June issue of Reason Magazine for a thorough discussion of this topic, as well as more information about the early history of the typewriter and the qwerty keyboard. In the mid s, U. Strong's study, which included proper controls and which was set up to allow direct comparison of qwerty and Dvorak data, found that after sufficient training, Dvorak typists were able to match their previous qwerty speeds, but not surpass them.
Furthermore, additional qwerty training for qwerty typists resulted in a greater increase in speed than additional Dvorak training for Dvorak typists who typed at a similar rate. These results would suggest that Dvorak's claims of faster and more efficient typing are bogus, and switching layouts on the basis of speed and efficiency would not make sense. Having heard Dvorak's claims, but not the modern-day scientific analysis of his experiments, I decided to switch to the Dvorak layout in the late s, when computer software specifically version 10 of the X Window System made it fairly simple to remap the keyboard layout without making any hardware changes.
It took a few months for my Dvorak speed to catch up to my qwerty speed. I found the Dvorak layout to be more comfortable and less effort.
For a period of four or five years, I used the qwerty layout at work on a shared DOS computer , and the Dvorak layout at home, spending about half of my typing time on each. During that time, my Dvorak speed increased to 90 wpm, and my qwerty speed reached 80 wpm. My accuracy improved slightly on both layouts. On the Dvorak layout, my most common typos are reversing two letters, whereas on the qwerty layout, it's more common for me to hit the wrong key altogether.
Note also that several people have made the claim that it's impossible to be able to switch back and forth between different keyboard layouts. That certainly hasn't been my experience, and I'm always happy to demonstrate for non-believers. The greatest benefit I've found from the Dvorak layout is that, in addition to feeling more comfortable, the typing-related discomfort I was beginning to experience in my wrists and forearms diminished, even though the amount of typing I was doing remained constant.
Once my workplace switched from DOS to Windows and I was able to use the Dvorak layout everwhere, those problems vanished and have not returned. Even in their studies, however, the evidence is mixed as to whether students learning Dvorak retain an advantage, since the differences seemed to diminish as training progressed. Ergonomic studies also confirm that the advantages of Dvorak are either small or nonexistent.
For example, A. The consistent finding in ergonomic studies is that the results imply no clear advantage for Dvorak, and certainly no advantage of the magnitude that is so often claimed. Of course, there are other sides to the argument. In a small study, researchers at the Assistive Technology Research Institute found that there was a small improvement to typing speed with Dvorak although it takes a bit of time:. The results of this study support the assertions that the Dvorak keyboard allows for faster and easier learning of typing, and faster typing for the experienced typist.
This is an important finding for clinicians who are considering alternative keyboard patterns for clients with fatigue or performance limits to productivity. Because initial typing rates on any new keyboard will likely be lower than on a familiar one, and because the subjects took longer to achieve fluency on the Dvorak keyboard, the study suggests that a clinician teaching this alternative pattern to clients must provide support over the time required to achieve fluid typing.
As far as comfort is concerned, that's a whole different story. Alternative keyboard layouts absolutely cause you to move your fingers less, we know that much because the most popular keys are all in the center row on alternative keyboards.
This means you're getting less strain on your fingers. Some people claim it helps with RSI, but those claims are also usually accompanied with better posture and improved keyboard habits in general. You're stretching your fingers less and in a different way, so it's not too surprising that it'd alleviate some RSI pain in some people.
Dvorak's the oldest keyboard layout and there's still not much more than circumstantial evidence behind its superiority over QWERTY. Then, the remaining letters are arranged so that you type words with alternating strokes of your left and right hand. The aim is to maximize speed by sharing the workload equally between your fingers on both hands. You can look at the most common words in the English language to see how this works in practice.
Of the top 10 words , seven of them consist of letters found entirely on the home row, and of these, four of them can be written without moving any of your fingers away from the keys that they rest on. Longer words require more movement, but these short words that tie everything together can be typed with minimal effort.
At the time I was still in high school, so I rarely had to type anything too lengthy in a short space of time.
Helpfully, I also had the kinds of time on my hands that only teenagers have access to. Unlike QWERTY, which I learned through years of hunting and pecking during frantic instant messaging conversations, Dvorak only really works if you learn to touch type. Ten years later, I can remember little about the process beyond the fact it was a pain. Blog posts that would have taken me a couple of hours to write on a weekend took me an entire afternoon, and the speed of conversations across every messaging service slowed to a crawl.
A decade earlier, I had taught my grandparents how to gradually learn to use a modern computer. In , I got a sense for what that must have felt like for them. But I persisted, and by the time I was faced by the daunting task of writing an essay a week at university, typing using Dvorak felt as natural as hunting and pecking had done at school, with the added benefit that I could now keep my eyes on a book or lecture while I took down notes.
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