# The Dvorak Keyboard:

## Efficient Typing for The Computer Age

I posted this to Usenet sometime during 1991. ...RSS

You have discovered that the arrangement of the keys on your computer's keyboard is an inefficient one. Indeed, Christopher Sholes, the mechanical designer who was first to build a typewriter using the now familiar QWERTYUIOP arrangement, did so because it was inefficient. He wanted to keep typists from going too fast and jamming the keys in the type basket. In the era of 33-MHz personal computers, such a design criterion is at best quaint.

During the 1930s, an early human-factors specialist named Dr. August Dvorak observed that the arrangement of keys on typewriters was a barrier to efficient typing.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the traditional layout with a typical version of the Dvorak layout (as implemented on a 101-key PC/AT keyboard):

    Dvorak			Sholes

    `1234567890\=[		`1234567890-=\		unshifted top row
    ~!@#$%^&*()|+{		~!@#$%^&*()_+|		shifted top row

    ',.pyfgcrl/]		qwertyuiop[]
    "<>PYFGCRL?}		QWERTYUIOP{}

    aoeuidhtns-		asdfghjkl;'
    AOEUIDHTNS_		ASDFGHJKL:"

    ;qjkxbmwvz		zxcvbnm,./		unshifted bottom row
    :QJKXBMWVZ		ZXCVBNM<>?		shifted bottom row

Note that, for a touch typist, the most frequently used letters of the alphabet fall under the home positions of the fingers. (Compare with ETAOINSHRDLU, a widely used English letter-frequency ordering.) In Dvorak's keyboard, the vowels are on the left and consonants on the right, so that many common letter sequences may be typed with strokes by alternate hands. Consonants are arranged such that other common letter sequences may be stroked by a rolling motion of the right hand. Also, for the most part, the stronger fingers are given the most frequent letters (instead of F, J, and K).

Altogether, the time/motion data collected by Dr. Dvorak in a study for the U.S. Navy suggests that total hand motion is reduced by a factor of about 3.

There is a sad chapter in the Dvorak story, which I shall not here relate in full. During the 1950s, a personal rivalry between Dvorak and another typewriting expert fouled the project and prevented the Navy from adopting Dvorak as its standard keyboard. Up to that point, the business-automation community had become aware of Dvorak's work, and interest in adopting a more rational typing interface had been growing. Smith-Corona actually built and sold Dvorak machines. (I believe the trade name was "SpeedKey" or something like that.) But the Navy's dropping the project killed the momentum--and now typewriter (and computer) users of the 1990s are saddled with a 100-year-old kluge in their most important user-input device.

I have personally found that long (> 1 hour) periods of typing are much less tiring in the Dvorak layout than on the Sholes keyboard. I am also hoping to avoid the dreaded Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (from which other members of my family have suffered). There are other devotees of Dvorak typing around; even Ralph Nader is rumored to use an old manual Dvorak-layout Smith-Corona portable typewriter.

Here's something to try: type MINIMUM PUMPKIN on your QWERTY keyboard. Then look at how that would be done on the Dvorak keyboard.

If you want the most authoritative information on how a Dvorak keyboard in the general case has its keys arranged, you should consult the ANSI standard on the subject. I'm not kidding; there really is one. Its number is X3.n22 (but I can't remember the value of "n"), and it is entitled "Alternate Keyboard Arrangement for Information Processing" or something like that. (The ANSI standard for the Sholes keyboard is X3.n23. Those who read this may ruefully recall the debates a few years ago about the B00 key.) The major difference between the ANSI Dvorak layout and what Dr. Dvorak himself used is that ANSI keeps the digits in numerical order. You can purchase a copy from

Standards Sales Department
American National Standards Institute
1430 Broadway
New York, NY 10018
+1 212/354-3300

## "To boldly type where no one has typed before..."

NOTE: Someone had asked whether someone just learning to type should learn the Dvorak or Sholes layout. The answer follows.

Every few years somebody invents a key-input device that is completely different from prior art. One such device was the Maltron keyboard, from a British inventor, which appeared in the late 1970s. This design had separate keypads for each hand mounted on a V-shaped sloping console. I have also seen a device called the Write-Hander, which was a hemispherical substrate with pushbutton switches for the fingers of the right hand. If I recall correctly, its output was ASCII, as was its input. You had to learn the ASCII codes for each character, and you pressed down fingers in specified combinations to encode the 0 and 1 bits of the ASCII representation.

A few exemplars of such key-input devices are bought by the curious or by research laboratories. Only people with serious physical disabilities or strong nonconformist yearnings adopt these for perpetual use. In today's computer market, a major strike against them is that it would be very difficult to put such a thing on a laptop computer.

(Well, a few years after I wrote this, Microsoft gave its blessing to the concept of a non-planar keyboard, the Microsoft "Natural" Keyboard, which bears the Microsoft name but is actually manufactured by KeyTronic. Alas, the MS Natural Keyboard retains the QWERTY layout! ...RSS)

I recommend that your friend at least obtain some skill on the Sholes arrangement, just because it's on 100,000,000 pieces of equipment. Then, if he intends to type large volumes of material, he would be well advised to learn the Dvorak layout and obtain the technology to use it.

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