Design

• When the first commercially successful typewriter was invented shortly after the American Civil War, it had a fatal design flaw. The keyboard was laid out with a logical alphabetic sequence and when the typist really got going, the typewriter keys would jam. Instead of redesigning the equipment, Christopher Sholes redesigned the typing method, placing the keys most often used together as far apart as possible. This slowed the typist down since she had to reach much farther to type the necessary letters, decreasing the frequency of jamming. This design placed Q, W, E, R, T, and Y in the top row of the keyboard and made the typewriter work better, though it was difficult to learn and caused injury to the typist.
  
  

Problems

• If only Sholes had redesigned the typewriter by including return springs to each key, a century's worth of typists would have been spared repetitive stress injuries to their wrists and hands. The fingers of Qwerty typists travel an estimated 16 to 20 miles per day because the keys are placed so far apart. The Qwerty method is also very counter-intuitive and requires a great deal of study and practice compared to other more ergonomically and logically designed keyboards. The deliberate slowing down of the typist also decreases potential speed and accuracy.
  
  

Dvorak

• In 1936, a doctor named August Dvorak redesigned the layout of the Qwerty keyboard into a form that was more ergonomic. This arrangement of keys with all five vowels on the left-hand side of the middle row and the most frequently used consonants on the right-hand side of the middle row, made typing much more efficient, increasing speed and accuracy and decreasing the stress on the typist's wrists and fingers. Dvorak typists' fingers only travel an average of one mile a day. Although there have been flurries of interest in Dvorak from time to time over the past 75 years, Qwerty is still the most commonly used keyboard layout around the world.
  
  

Colemak

• Recently designed by Shai Coleman, the Colemak method was developed to help Qwerty typists to transition to a more ergonomic layout. Many of the keys are in the same position but several are rearranged to make typing more efficient and less stressful. Where the Dvorak layout encourages hand alternation while typing, the Colemak method encourages finger alternation. It also moves the U key from the center row in favor of the more often used R key to increase efficiency.
  
  

Why Qwerty Persists

• Though other keyboard layouts were discovered to be more efficient and healthier methods for typing, several factors have kept the Qwerty keyboard as the standard. An entire industry grew up around the manufacture of Qwerty keyboards and the training of Qwerty typists. Qwerty was the status quo and what business, education, and the general public typists were used to. Economics also played a part since the first alternative, the Dvorak keyboard, appeared during the Great Depression and consumers were reluctant to give up their existing Qwerty typewriters for the untried Dvorak option. Today, Qwerty is everywhere, on typewriters and computer keyboards. This may change in the future, however, with the return to alphabetically arranged keys on cell phones and other text messaging devices.
  
  

How to Switch

• If you decide to switch to either Dvorak or Colemak, you don't need to buy a new computer keyboard. Simply go into your operating system control panel and change the keyboard mapping settings. Dvorak comes with most operating systems and Colemak is downloadable from the Internet. If you do decide to change your typing method, be sure to learn touch typing to increase your speed even further.