I’ll bet that I type faster than you. Not that I’m the fastest typist in the world or anything but just compared to the average typist I’m pretty quick. In speed typing tests I run in the high 50s to low 60s with an average of 2-3 mistakes per minute. (Here’s a good place to take a typing test.)

The reason I type fast and accurately is that I use the Dvorak keyboard layout. Simply put, it’s a keyboard layout that takes advantage of common letter combinations and frequency of use to optimally position the keys for speed an accuracy. You can read much more about the details at Wikipedia.org.

I learned about the Dvorak keyboard layout during my first year at Northern Arizona University. As a Philosophy and History major I had to write a lot of papers so I was already a pretty fast typist. As soon as I finished my last exam for the Fall semester I converted my keyboard over to Dvorak and used small sticky labels to label my keyboard according to the new layout. During the Christmas break I practiced for about 30 minutes a day just copying text from books or whatnot. Buy the time the Spring semester started up I was able to type almost as fast on Dvorak as I could with qwarty Within a few weeks I had far surpassed my qwerty speeds and my typos dropped dramatically. (Didn’t do anything to help my spelling though.)

I didn’t run into any problems until I got my first job out of college doing HTML markup. (How a Philosophy and History major ended up doing HTML markup is another story.) The problem would be that when someone wanted to come over to my PC and work with me I would have to switch back and forth with the keyboard layouts. We were using Windows 2000 at work so this wasn’t exactly easy to do. My manager really freaked every time it came up.

When I started learning the Dvorak layout I had anticipated that my qwarty skills would remain roughly the same. That it would be like speaking two languages. In practice though it hasn’t worked out that way. Today for me to type on a qwerty keyboard is pretty much hunt-and-peck. That really sucks because I spend a decent amount of time at other PCs helping my coworkers with their Actionscript coding. I believe that if I practiced I could get my qwerty speed up a little but it will always be hunt-and-peck.

With Windows XP it is very easy to convert from one keyboard layout to another if you set it up that way. And XP, for better or worse, applies the keyboard layout on a per application basis. That means that I could be helping someone in Flash using the Dvorak layout and they could switch over to Outlook and reply to an email in qwerty. You can do this with keyboard shortcuts that you set up or leave by placing the language bar on the task bar.

I was also very happy to discover that Ubuntu supports the Dvorak layout. It was surprisingly simple to switch over.

I’ve continued to use the standard keyboards that everyone else uses. On a few occasions I have tried to re-order the keys but that never works. On my Dell laptop I was able to re-order a few of the keys like “[, ], /, =, \” etc. Those are the ones that give me the biggest problems.

Obviously with Dvorak you don’t look at the keyboard to type. In fact, if you asked me to point to what would be the “j” key on Dvorak I wouldn’t be able to tell you. That’s a bit of a downside when it comes to things like Photoshop. I’m big on keyboard shortcuts so if I want the crop tool I have to hit the “i” key, which is Dvorak for “c”. So you can see where I’m going with this. If my hands aren’t on the keyboard then sometimes it’s hard to find a key by sight. Most of the common ones I know but a lot of the time I have to put both hands on the keyboard just to find the “k” key. That part sucks. That’s also why I would love to have that LED Keyboard!

I’m still glad that I switched over. The speed and comfort with which I can type more than makes up for the drawbacks. And if I can ever get my hands on a good Dvorak keyboard that has the same split design as the ones I’m used to then I’ll jump all over it. (I use the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.)

Oh, and the really fun part of using Dvorak is watching someone sit down and try to type who doesn’t know that I’ve switched. I love watching them go through that WTF moment. I’ve actually suffered that myself in reverse when I typed in a system password, thinking that I was in Dvorak but not. And then trying to figure out later what I had typed. That was a real mess.

polyGeek Dvorak