More Dvorak, less Qwerty — How did I?

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Be Expert 101

6 min readAug 8, 2015

So, this was me 3 months ago.

…was furious and hated how Qwerty was designed, moreover, tired with prolong typing because of repetive “one-handed” words. I was done, I started to feel pains on my right wrist. I hate my 7 years typing on Qwerty just as much as tatseless Turkey on Thanksgiving.

I decided to set sail and find a new home. A “better” keyboard layout that I can feel more comfortable typing on.

After some sort of google-fu. You might end up where I was, this one is simple enough but still contains useful information.
http://www.howtogeek.com/189270/alternative-keyboard-layouts-explained-dvorak-colemak-and-whether-you-should-care/

In short, QWERTY was designed early on. For typewriter, to avoid jamming — some sort of mechanical limitation when every charaters on the typewriter itself is assigned to a bar to strike the ribbon then paper, if both hit the ribbon too close apart, they jam. Still widely used until today due to its popularity.

Dvorak was designed from ground up with astonishing 33 letters placement changed from the standard ANSI (US) QWERTY layout, left out only “a”, “m”, “\” and 10 numbers.

There’s Colemark for people want to jump to “better” layout but don’t want to sacrifice most useful shortcuts, mix between Qwerty and Dvorak (not really) and only has as much as half of letter arrangement changes.

The biggest debates are:

Qwerty introduces more finger movements due to common letters are placed more far apart, while Dvorak has vowels on the left home row and the most used non-vowels on the right. So the alternating between 2 hands and easier access to those precious letters are main selling point of Dvorak.
For the same reason, Qwerty has more finger movement, far away vowels, and such, thus amount of common words can be typed on Qwerty home row is rather small, Dvorak can do many more, same goes to Colemark.
Basically, Colemark and Dvorak are more “ergonomic” layout

But the debates are debates, and most Dvorak researches were done by Dvorak himself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard don’t tell me that not the case with qwerty’s designs though). To myself, I have easier time reaching my vowels and other letters more precisely. Speed pick up quite quickly, almost reach my 50wpm Qwerty as before after 2 months (35–45wpm now). Also, my wrist problems have been gone for good. But, I also have troubles using shortcuts when having my mouse in my right hand, more on that below.

Look at Dvorak layout

Compare to Qwerty

That. lovely. top. left. three. keys in the most easily reached location— COMMA, PERIOD, and apostrophe. They normally are taken for granted but when they are placed more conveniently, you would appreciate them much more.

But let be realistic and put things in perspective here

common “th”, “ch”, “tr”, “ght”, “rt” and a lot more can be spam out quickly and effortlessly on the right hand. I love that. Works exceptionally well in English and as well as in my native mother tongue — Vietnamese, a language has the alphabet based on ABC one.
That top left three keys, more useful than to meet the eyes.
It’s relatively balanced better that Qwerty. Hands will keep alternating thus reduce strains on your hands to type out words that QWERT-ly on only one side of keyboard.
Dvorak are “rumored” to help reduce straining. Personally, it helps me a lot. I no longer have the issue I had while typing in Qwerty due to the alternating action that alleviates the strains on my right hand.

What about the cons then?

You are f***ed big time to re-learn short cut, and some require excessive moment on your left hand when holding mouse in your right hand — notoriously Ctrl Z X C V W.

You have 3 ways to deal with it. First is brute force your way in, just learn the whole thing again, or use QWERTY layout when using your favorite programs and type it Dvorak (Details below), or lastly, if you are a Mac user, use the system built-in Dvorak layout with QWERTY short cut (Details below), I love this at first. But now I only use Qwerty in programs, since that only works if Command key exists in the short cut — useless in Ps, CAD, and a lots more — similar result can be achieved in Windows by utilizing Autohotkey (Details below). I find learning shortcut again is not that hard.

Can’t type “Qwerty” very fast at first, neither “Dvorak”, results in poor communication with your friend to let them know why you are so crap now but will be better later like a phoenix reborn.
Of course, take a while to learn. I used to type 50wpm in Qwerty, took me 2 months and now I’m just as fast and getting faster.

So, that’s the deal, trade convenient short-cuts (not really) and a bit of time (not really) for a more ergonomic layout and maybe a little better at protecting yourself from health people.

How to start then?

Head right to The Typing Cat, they have a lot of useful exercises — the best website I can find out there. I recommended it over other sites due to its minimal design, speed test mode, used to have Coding and Quotes practice but now gone or I’m just incorrect. Let me know if you find that features!

After you’re comfortable with it, head to Typeracer for more realistic situations, practicing can be done by racing with other people or alone!

And, last step is to use it as your normal layout.

I think that’s all I use, and of course after many non-sensical craps I sent to my friends — total gibberish and slowwwww replies and much more. But after two months, I actively practice, about 4–5 days a week, 15–30 mins once or twice in days when I have free time. Longer periods in weekends.

Tips:

Touch type, don’t bother to stick stickers on your keyboard, it will ruin your day when you emergency need to reply to a ultra-important email and can’t get back to your lovely old layout.
Don’t be too tempted to use Qwerty, that results messing with your muscle memory. Use your phone instead, it will help to not affect your training. At work though, use Qwerty then : ( touch type and longer training sessions will help a lot!

About the Details:

To add an alternate layout on MacOS, head to System Preferences/ Keyboard/ Input source/ Click the +. It has both the Dvorak and Dvorak with Qwerty shortcut (still strongly against this due to its modifiers needed to be pressed). Then head to Shortcut Tabs/ Input methods, you should be able to punch new short cut in for switching layout. I recommend Option + Spacebar, or Control + Spacebar if you use dual OS like me and use Auto Hotkey to change Windows modifiers on the left side to Windows-Alt-Ctrl (to match shortcut with Mac, especially how I love Command key on the left spacebar, better to reach with my thumb than pinky on the bottom left)
To add an alternate layout on Window, head to Control Panel/ Clock, Language and Region/ Chang input methods. In the Input method row, it has “add an input method”, choose it, find Dvorak then add it in. Change layout with Windows + Spacebar.
Auto Hotkeys is a free program, to make macro and automation, but it works well for this situation, too. Help can be found to add new script to map “Ctrl + J” to “Ctrl + C.” I personally will recommend it to be used as an ergonomic improvement by making a new script then add

LCtrl::LWin

LWin::LAlt

LAlt::LCtrl

So now your much love modifiers can be reached more easily with your left thumb and your Windows key will never be mistakenly pressed anymore.

Thank you to read have fun switching! Have any response/ story, let me know in the comment!

P/s: Thank Chin for great input, a******, still a good friend though ha ha

Edit: Included more information on each layout and new title.