TL;DR: Colemak is recognized as one of the more ergonomic layouts; custom keyboards aid and ease transitioning to alternative layouts; and, finally, the widespread story on the origin of QWERTY is false.
If your job involves typing for the majority of your day (e.g. writing, programming, etc.), then you may have started to notice that the way that keys are arranged on a keyboard feel a bit, for lack of a better term, “clunky”, especially if you touch type; and you’d be right, and you’re not the only one.
Of course, I’m talking about the standard keyboard layout: QWERTY
So, if many people feel this way about the standard layout, why is it the standard in the first place?
History of QWERTY
The QWERTY keyboard layout was invented in the 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soulé. The goal of the QWERTY layout was to slow down typists so that the mechanical typewriters of the time would not jam, or that’s the story that’s widely circulated; admittedly, I also used to believe this, until I started delving deeper into custom keyboards and layouts.
Two things refute this popular story:
First, a 2011 study conducted by a pair of researchers from Kyoto University: Koichi Yasuoka and Motoko Yasuoka, concluded that the mechanics of the typewriter did not influence the keyboard layout; rather, it emerged based on how early adopters used the typewriter, which included telegraph operators. By the very nature of their job, telegraph operators needed to transcribe messages quickly, thus debunking the story that QWERTY was meant to slow down typists.
Second, Sholes himself wasn’t convinced that QWERTY was the most efficient and continued to develop keyboard layouts that he deemed more efficient, such as the one depicted in this patent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/77/57/4b/901ffece2a59bb/US568630-drawings-page-2.png
Regardless of the origin, because the layout was present in the first commercially successful typewriter (after being acquired by E. Remington & Sons), QWERTY became the de-facto standard. It was adopted by the Teletype company in 1910, and continued to use the layout when it became the keyboard provider for computers in the US, UK, and Japan; thus further cementing QWERTY as the standard.
Alternatives
There are a number of layouts that have emerged since then: Dvorak, Colemak, Workman, Norman, Halmak, and ISRT; to name a few.
Dvorak was the first to really challenge QWERTY, as it reduced finger travel during typing. However, it’s a radically different layout from QWERTY, so the learning curve is high. It’s technically the second, most popular layout because all major operating systems support it as a built-in layout. A friend of mine uses this layout and he says that typing (in English, of course) using this layout is pleasant, but he does say that the layout is not optimized for writing code because of the placement of the punctuations.
Colemak has a lower learning curve because it retains most of the QWERTY layout, changing the position of only 16 keys. This has made its adoption much easier and broader compared to Dvorak. Despite the bigger adoption though, Windows does not support it out of the box and requires additional software. All others do though, so it’s a mystery why Windows is the only hold-out. Interestingly, despite the minimal change from QWERTY, Colemak is considered as one of the more ergonomic keyboard layouts.
The other layouts I mentioned are also relatively popular, but none have OS support.
Custom Keyboards and Transitioning to other Layouts
Custom keyboards really facilitate transitioning to other layouts as it removes the dependency on OS support. Aside from this, they provide other benefits; such as:
- A separate layer can be defined to address the issue of Dvorak when it comes to the placement of punctuations.
- In the case of Colemak, you can do the transition gradually by changing a few keys at a time; this can be done by following the Tarmak transitional layouts. More on this later.
- For the less popular or niche layouts, custom keyboards don't have any OS dependencies, so it makes adopting them easier.
Transitioning to Colemak using Tarmak
I started my transition on a Friday night preceding a long weekend, following the transition layouts described here. I progressed to the third step by Saturday afternoon, I didn't do any typing on Sunday to do some house-related tasks, I resumed on Monday and was on the fourth transition by early afternoon. By Monday evening, I've completely changed my keyboard's layout to Colemak.
Custom Keyboard Options
There are many options for this and they don't need to be expensive, such as this one from Keychron.
You can also build your own using open source options, such as this. I built this myself as my entry into split, columnar staggered keyboards:
Just be careful as it's a very deep rabbit hole (no one has found the bottom yet 🙂)
Final Notes
One caveat, my speed was only 12 WPM with an accuracy of 95%; but the difficult part is over and I can type without looking at the keyboard, the speed will improve over time.
If this has inspired you, I would advise that you proceed at a pace that's comfortable to you, especially if you're not a touch typist. Here are a few links that might be useful:
- https://monkeytype.com/ - typing test site that supports several languages and layout emulation.
- https://www.keybr.com/ - site that progressively teaches typing, starting from the home row, onwards. Also supports layout emulation.
- Transitional Colemak - additional information on the approach that I used.
- https://www.colemak.academy/ - Colemak-specific typing tutor
Have fun!
