Do we know if learning COLEMAK is worth it?
January 31, 2020 6:27 PM Subscribe
I learned QWERTY keyboard layout in elementary school and have more or less mastered it at this point in life. I get about 70-80 wpm, and don't really need more. But I wonder about the benefits of alternative layouts like COLEMAK or DVORAK. Is there any research into the topic?
The kinds of research I'm hoping to find:
1. How long does it take to reach parity with the old layout?
2. Does one expect any additional wpm from the transition?
3. Are there actually any medical benefits? Or comfort benefits?
4. Inevitable chatfilter bait question: are there any gotchas to be wary of when setting COLEMAK up on computers?
The kinds of research I'm hoping to find:
1. How long does it take to reach parity with the old layout?
2. Does one expect any additional wpm from the transition?
3. Are there actually any medical benefits? Or comfort benefits?
4. Inevitable chatfilter bait question: are there any gotchas to be wary of when setting COLEMAK up on computers?
Best answer: This paper computes the typing efficiency of Dvorak and Qwerty, simulating typing out long novels. Dvorak is more efficient, unsurprisingly.
Anecdotally, expect 18 months to reach parity and no additional wpm. Your old hand pain/strain should go away unless you really hammer your keys. Get in the habit of writing to game developers about the bugs in their game controls caused by alternate layouts. I’ve typed Dvorak full time since 2008.
posted by michaelh at 7:40 PM on January 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
Anecdotally, expect 18 months to reach parity and no additional wpm. Your old hand pain/strain should go away unless you really hammer your keys. Get in the habit of writing to game developers about the bugs in their game controls caused by alternate layouts. I’ve typed Dvorak full time since 2008.
posted by michaelh at 7:40 PM on January 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
I learned Dvorak to reduce RSI / pain from typing badly in qwerty. It did.
posted by doomsey at 7:41 PM on January 31, 2020
posted by doomsey at 7:41 PM on January 31, 2020
Anecdatum: I typed 92 wpm in qwerty. When I switched to Colemak, I was at 32 wpm (painful) after two weeks, 45 wpm (bearable) after four weeks, and 60 wpm (no longer distracting) after four months.
I no longer have wrist pain, but I have no evidence it wouldn't have disappeared if I had limited myself to barely typing for several weeks.
As for setup gotchas, the Xkbd layout re-defines caps lock to backspace in a way that means there is no longer a key called caps lock. So if you typically remapped caps lock to something else, and don't also want to remap backspace, you're out of luck unless you're willing to edit your xkbd configs. (If you're unsure, you should assume that you are unwilling to edit your xkbd configs.)
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 8:51 PM on January 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
I no longer have wrist pain, but I have no evidence it wouldn't have disappeared if I had limited myself to barely typing for several weeks.
As for setup gotchas, the Xkbd layout re-defines caps lock to backspace in a way that means there is no longer a key called caps lock. So if you typically remapped caps lock to something else, and don't also want to remap backspace, you're out of luck unless you're willing to edit your xkbd configs. (If you're unsure, you should assume that you are unwilling to edit your xkbd configs.)
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 8:51 PM on January 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
I learned Dvorak in 1996 because I knew I had a few decades of professional keyboard use in front of me, and anything I could do to reduce injury from it was probably worth it.
I took me about six months to get up to parity, and I kept going, getting about 25% faster than my old Qwerty speed.
While the Dvorak is a bit faster, the main advantage is comfort. I do a lot less work when typing than a Qwerty typist. If you look at a normal person typing 80 wpm, their hands and fingers are going everywhere, but if you look at me typing the same speed, my hands are just calmer. Something like 45% of the letters in the English language are in the home row, resulting in far less movement.
I can barely type on a Qwerty now, because I've been almost exclusively Dvorak for almost 25 years. If I have to type on a Qwerty, I usually wind up looking at my hands and typing about 30 wpm.
On a modern PC, I can switch the layout to Dvorak in under a minute and remove it when I'm done. I also have a post-it note on my monitor at work telling my coworkers what the hotkey is to switch to Qwerty, should they ever need to use my computer.
The biggest gotcha I've had is with remote PC stuff. Many years ago, for work, I needed to remote into a company server to do something. I did, and somehow my Dvorak settings got passed through to it. The next person to log into it was very confused.
When doing remote-desktop stuff, the various machines each have their own keyboard rules; I've had problems with double Dvorak transforms and other weirdness. Generally, if doing remote stuff, it's best to use Qwerty.
Finally, as michaelh mentioned, any program that relies on physical key placement - games, vi, Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V for copy/paste, etc. will have weirdness because the keys are no longer physically related to each other as the developer expected them to be.
And FWIW, after 25 years of daily Dvorak typing, I've never {pounds furiously on wooden table} had any kind of RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
posted by Hatashran at 8:53 PM on January 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
I took me about six months to get up to parity, and I kept going, getting about 25% faster than my old Qwerty speed.
While the Dvorak is a bit faster, the main advantage is comfort. I do a lot less work when typing than a Qwerty typist. If you look at a normal person typing 80 wpm, their hands and fingers are going everywhere, but if you look at me typing the same speed, my hands are just calmer. Something like 45% of the letters in the English language are in the home row, resulting in far less movement.
I can barely type on a Qwerty now, because I've been almost exclusively Dvorak for almost 25 years. If I have to type on a Qwerty, I usually wind up looking at my hands and typing about 30 wpm.
On a modern PC, I can switch the layout to Dvorak in under a minute and remove it when I'm done. I also have a post-it note on my monitor at work telling my coworkers what the hotkey is to switch to Qwerty, should they ever need to use my computer.
The biggest gotcha I've had is with remote PC stuff. Many years ago, for work, I needed to remote into a company server to do something. I did, and somehow my Dvorak settings got passed through to it. The next person to log into it was very confused.
When doing remote-desktop stuff, the various machines each have their own keyboard rules; I've had problems with double Dvorak transforms and other weirdness. Generally, if doing remote stuff, it's best to use Qwerty.
Finally, as michaelh mentioned, any program that relies on physical key placement - games, vi, Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V for copy/paste, etc. will have weirdness because the keys are no longer physically related to each other as the developer expected them to be.
And FWIW, after 25 years of daily Dvorak typing, I've never {pounds furiously on wooden table} had any kind of RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
posted by Hatashran at 8:53 PM on January 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak in college. It took me a couple of weeks before I was at all capable, and a while longer to get good, but I can't remember exactly how long.
My reason for switching was part curiosity, part to make myself relearn as are-coral-made suggests. My typing habits in QWERTY were bad. I was pretty fast, but I had to look at the keyboard and I overused my middle fingers, using the others very little. I didn't use a new physical keyboard or swap the keys when I switched layouts, so I was forced to learn to type by touch properly. I'm probably a bit faster now, about 11 years later, than I was then (people comment on my typing speed). More noticeable for me is that I type completely by touch and can type while paying attention to something else, and I have never developed any hand or wrist issues from typing. Obviously, I can't say whether I would have developed pain or other problems if I hadn't switched. I didn't have any pain before I switched, but I was pretty young.
Never tried COLEMAK, but setting up Dvorak has been pretty painless for me. I dual boot Windows and Linux; Windows occasionally switches back because I didn't find the right setting to make Dvorak a global default. Linux asked for the keyboard layout during installation and as a result generally respects it a bit more. If you need to use software that doesn't allow you to remap keys, then it may be a bit less efficient to use. (I have to use the arrow keys in vim because the vi-style HJKL makes no sense on a Dvorak keyboard.)
posted by egregious theorem at 8:55 PM on January 31, 2020
My reason for switching was part curiosity, part to make myself relearn as are-coral-made suggests. My typing habits in QWERTY were bad. I was pretty fast, but I had to look at the keyboard and I overused my middle fingers, using the others very little. I didn't use a new physical keyboard or swap the keys when I switched layouts, so I was forced to learn to type by touch properly. I'm probably a bit faster now, about 11 years later, than I was then (people comment on my typing speed). More noticeable for me is that I type completely by touch and can type while paying attention to something else, and I have never developed any hand or wrist issues from typing. Obviously, I can't say whether I would have developed pain or other problems if I hadn't switched. I didn't have any pain before I switched, but I was pretty young.
Never tried COLEMAK, but setting up Dvorak has been pretty painless for me. I dual boot Windows and Linux; Windows occasionally switches back because I didn't find the right setting to make Dvorak a global default. Linux asked for the keyboard layout during installation and as a result generally respects it a bit more. If you need to use software that doesn't allow you to remap keys, then it may be a bit less efficient to use. (I have to use the arrow keys in vim because the vi-style HJKL makes no sense on a Dvorak keyboard.)
posted by egregious theorem at 8:55 PM on January 31, 2020
I'm currently typing in Colemak! (Well, a variant.)
I learned Dvorak about 17 years ago, but I didn't really stick with it until I started to use ergonomic split keyboards with it (16 years ago). From then to about a year ago, on a split keyboard I'd naturally type Dvorak and on a normal keyboard I'd type Qwerty.
The change was that I bought a new 40% ortholinear keyboard (Planck EZ) and wanted to see if I could learn a third layout on a different physical layout. It took a month or two until I settled in, but now I type with relative ease in Colemak.
I retained Qwerty, but when I went back to the split keyboard? Dvorak was gone! It was bizzare. I wanted to type in Colemak, but my twitch memory for copy/paste was going for Dvorak. So it looks like my limit is Qwerty+other. (When I put Colemak on the split keyboard, I was good.)
Compared to Dvorak, Colemak is going to retain most of your shortcuts: all of the quit and clipboard shortcuts stay the same. Most letters are on the same fingers. It's roughly the same efficiency wise, but it emphasizes rolls of the fingers a bit more. It feels about the same, comfort wise. I think keyboard shape and ergonomics has a stronger effect than layout, but every bit helps. If I had the option 20 years ago, I would have gone to Colemak instead.
Also, do Colemak or Dvorak in the keyboard. Nothing hurts like needing to type a password in two layers of layout translation! Or make sure it's clear what the input method is on the login screen, I guess.
posted by Anonymous Function at 9:40 PM on January 31, 2020
I learned Dvorak about 17 years ago, but I didn't really stick with it until I started to use ergonomic split keyboards with it (16 years ago). From then to about a year ago, on a split keyboard I'd naturally type Dvorak and on a normal keyboard I'd type Qwerty.
The change was that I bought a new 40% ortholinear keyboard (Planck EZ) and wanted to see if I could learn a third layout on a different physical layout. It took a month or two until I settled in, but now I type with relative ease in Colemak.
I retained Qwerty, but when I went back to the split keyboard? Dvorak was gone! It was bizzare. I wanted to type in Colemak, but my twitch memory for copy/paste was going for Dvorak. So it looks like my limit is Qwerty+other. (When I put Colemak on the split keyboard, I was good.)
Compared to Dvorak, Colemak is going to retain most of your shortcuts: all of the quit and clipboard shortcuts stay the same. Most letters are on the same fingers. It's roughly the same efficiency wise, but it emphasizes rolls of the fingers a bit more. It feels about the same, comfort wise. I think keyboard shape and ergonomics has a stronger effect than layout, but every bit helps. If I had the option 20 years ago, I would have gone to Colemak instead.
Also, do Colemak or Dvorak in the keyboard. Nothing hurts like needing to type a password in two layers of layout translation! Or make sure it's clear what the input method is on the login screen, I guess.
posted by Anonymous Function at 9:40 PM on January 31, 2020
One of the things you can do in the firmware on a lot of modern mechanical keyboards is change the layout in the keyboard itself rather than letting the os do it for you. Then the computer has no idea you’re not typing on a qwerty layout because it’s seeing the key presses it expects to. Mechanical keyboards are a bit of a rabbit hole to go down but if you look for something that supports the qmk firmware or something similar, you can just do the remapping there. And the keyboard will work no matter what machine you take it to.
posted by mikesch at 1:02 AM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by mikesch at 1:02 AM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
Seconding Anon Func: I've been touch typing in Dvorak for 35 years, but most of that time I have not had a physical Dvorak keyboard. Even with all my years touch typing in Dvorak, I can't hunt and peck. I can only touch type. If I want to carefully type in a password (maybe in a log in screen) I'll often switch to qwerty so I can do the slow, single finger typing thing.
I did switch my physical keyboard for one computer I had in the 1990's. That was a fun hack, but it made it basically impossible for anyone else to use my keyboard. That is a real inconvenience with Dvorak. It means fussing whenever someone else needs to type on my computer. It's not a huge deal, but it is a little bit of inconvenience. It also means I can't touch type on public kiosks or other places where switching to Dvorak isn't an option. Again, not a huge issue but it does come up.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:08 AM on February 1, 2020
I did switch my physical keyboard for one computer I had in the 1990's. That was a fun hack, but it made it basically impossible for anyone else to use my keyboard. That is a real inconvenience with Dvorak. It means fussing whenever someone else needs to type on my computer. It's not a huge deal, but it is a little bit of inconvenience. It also means I can't touch type on public kiosks or other places where switching to Dvorak isn't an option. Again, not a huge issue but it does come up.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:08 AM on February 1, 2020
This post inspired me to try leaning Dvorak. (I googled and found this site.) I can tell you that in 15 minutes that a) learning is hard and b) it's so much more economical in terms of movement.
posted by hoyland at 4:59 AM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by hoyland at 4:59 AM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
If a follow-on question is ok: is there a keyboard layout that is better for heavy control and escape key use (emacs)?
posted by medusa at 5:14 AM on February 1, 2020
posted by medusa at 5:14 AM on February 1, 2020
This is a fun rabbit hole. As others have said, the big pay off comes from switching the keyboard to something ergonomic ( with thumb keys), and with modern firmware that lets one program macros and chords. The only way to avoid emacs pinky is to not use the pinky.
FWIW, I don’t know anyone who has adopted pure colemak in the last ~4 years. It’s all colemak-dh. I chose that to preserve hotkeys, which was a mistake. After getting back to typing speed ~1month, I reprogrammed those actions to better locations. Dvorak vs colemak is a feel thing. Typing a few sentences in each was enough to show that I don’t like Dvorak’s alternation. I considered matron and BEAKL, and kind of wish I’d stuck with the latter. As to the payoff, absolutely everything is better than QWERTY. Typing in QWERTY now feels like being forced through king fu wire work while half awake and suffering DT tremors. It’s so much work. In contrast, It’s relaxing to type most of a sentence before I need to move my first finger from the home row. My speed still isn’t as fast as decades of QWERTY, but I don’t care.
The only gotchas tend to be passwords, remembering what layout you were using at the time. Macs have a thing where there are two different places to update the layout. If you use your home directory, Apple will helpfully switch back to QWERTY every time you type in a password. On Linux and Mac, you have to type in disk and boot passwords with QWERTY.
emacs pinky suggestions. The site has many keyboard reviews that I generally agree with. Pm for more.
One of the most evolved
weird layouts. And a fun comparison site . One can disagree with their scoring, but the list is pretty exhaustive.
posted by unknown knowns at 5:58 AM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
FWIW, I don’t know anyone who has adopted pure colemak in the last ~4 years. It’s all colemak-dh. I chose that to preserve hotkeys, which was a mistake. After getting back to typing speed ~1month, I reprogrammed those actions to better locations. Dvorak vs colemak is a feel thing. Typing a few sentences in each was enough to show that I don’t like Dvorak’s alternation. I considered matron and BEAKL, and kind of wish I’d stuck with the latter. As to the payoff, absolutely everything is better than QWERTY. Typing in QWERTY now feels like being forced through king fu wire work while half awake and suffering DT tremors. It’s so much work. In contrast, It’s relaxing to type most of a sentence before I need to move my first finger from the home row. My speed still isn’t as fast as decades of QWERTY, but I don’t care.
The only gotchas tend to be passwords, remembering what layout you were using at the time. Macs have a thing where there are two different places to update the layout. If you use your home directory, Apple will helpfully switch back to QWERTY every time you type in a password. On Linux and Mac, you have to type in disk and boot passwords with QWERTY.
emacs pinky suggestions. The site has many keyboard reviews that I generally agree with. Pm for more.
One of the most evolved
weird layouts. And a fun comparison site . One can disagree with their scoring, but the list is pretty exhaustive.
posted by unknown knowns at 5:58 AM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
Overloading keys to do different things for tapping vs holding is an easy way to gain a bunch of modifiers in easier to hit places. Karabiner-Elements to do it in software, QMK to do it in hardware.
I've also seen a lot of people put modal editing on top of Emacs: evil, Spacemacs, Doom, god-mode, etc.
posted by Anonymous Function at 12:59 PM on February 1, 2020
I've also seen a lot of people put modal editing on top of Emacs: evil, Spacemacs, Doom, god-mode, etc.
posted by Anonymous Function at 12:59 PM on February 1, 2020
Best answer: There's a page on the comparison site linked by unknown knowns above that talks about the problem of measuring typing effort. It refers to a few other layout analyzers but doesn't link to them. When I was casting about for a new layout to learn I found the last one referred to in that text, Carpalx. The Carpalx site also has a page about typing effort. Somewhere, and I can't find it now, I found an analysis that could be summarized as "nearly anything is better than QWERTY so just pick one that seems right." So you could poke around and try to find the one that scores best on multiple lists, or just pick the one that's going to be the easiest for you to adopt. But what's easy for you to adopt might not be the same as what's easy for other people.
I thought I had read something recently that referred to studies about keyboard layouts, but I think (after a lot of digging around in my browser history) what I read was actually just this piece at The Verge. I don't get the impression there's been a whole lot of research outside people coming up with models of typing effort and then running them against layouts and texts. There does seem to be a fair bit of research on ergonomic keyboard designs (split, angled, etc) but key layouts seem to lack that sort of rigor.
FWIW when I switched keyboard layouts I had a whole plan about how I was going to take four steps to switch, using transitional layouts (moving about five letters at once). It didn't work that way. I gave up after a couple weeks in step two. Eventually I tried again, and the only way I managed to switch was to force myself just to jump to the end and relearn touch typing all over again. I had the same sort of learning curve as a few commenters above: slow and painful for a while, then less slow but still kind of frustrating for a while, then proficient but still not as fast. Once I hit the point of proficiency I stopped paying attention to speed, which mean that I didn't actually notice at first that I type faster now (easily over 70 WPM with QGMLWY) than I did before (~55 WPM with QWERTY). Anecdotes aren't studies, but I do think that "better than QWERTY" is at least a decent starting point.
I have to use shared computers and keyboards at work now. After making a conscious effort to get it back I can mostly touch type in QWERTY again, too, but I had to focus on it really hard for the first couple months. Passwords require extra concentration.
posted by fedward at 6:56 PM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
I thought I had read something recently that referred to studies about keyboard layouts, but I think (after a lot of digging around in my browser history) what I read was actually just this piece at The Verge. I don't get the impression there's been a whole lot of research outside people coming up with models of typing effort and then running them against layouts and texts. There does seem to be a fair bit of research on ergonomic keyboard designs (split, angled, etc) but key layouts seem to lack that sort of rigor.
FWIW when I switched keyboard layouts I had a whole plan about how I was going to take four steps to switch, using transitional layouts (moving about five letters at once). It didn't work that way. I gave up after a couple weeks in step two. Eventually I tried again, and the only way I managed to switch was to force myself just to jump to the end and relearn touch typing all over again. I had the same sort of learning curve as a few commenters above: slow and painful for a while, then less slow but still kind of frustrating for a while, then proficient but still not as fast. Once I hit the point of proficiency I stopped paying attention to speed, which mean that I didn't actually notice at first that I type faster now (easily over 70 WPM with QGMLWY) than I did before (~55 WPM with QWERTY). Anecdotes aren't studies, but I do think that "better than QWERTY" is at least a decent starting point.
I have to use shared computers and keyboards at work now. After making a conscious effort to get it back I can mostly touch type in QWERTY again, too, but I had to focus on it really hard for the first couple months. Passwords require extra concentration.
posted by fedward at 6:56 PM on February 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
this Is the other common keyboard analyzer. I thought the anything but QWERTY page was there, but apparently not
posted by unknown knowns at 9:18 PM on February 1, 2020
posted by unknown knowns at 9:18 PM on February 1, 2020
If the goal is to retain touch typing on Qwerty, I highly recommend putting the alternate layout on an external keyboard which is physically different in some fashion: ergo, ortholinear, split, anything.
At least in my experience, I use a standard keyboard and I'm typing in Qwerty right off the bat. I never got that knack until I stopped switching back and forth in software.
posted by Anonymous Function at 11:30 PM on February 1, 2020
At least in my experience, I use a standard keyboard and I'm typing in Qwerty right off the bat. I never got that knack until I stopped switching back and forth in software.
posted by Anonymous Function at 11:30 PM on February 1, 2020
Response by poster: > FWIW when I switched keyboard layouts I had a whole plan about how I was going to take four steps to switch, using transitional layouts (moving about five letters at once). It didn't work that way.
Not surprised. My current plan is to, once I've decided it's worth the effort start, bootstrap by using Anki to memorize the key map. I'm hoping that separating the memorization from immersion will remove some of the up front frustration, but I know immersion will be difficult in any circumstance. I just figure adding the 26 cards or so to my deck with a month lead time before immersion will skip the awkward cheatsheet phase and compress a day off adoption rate into maybe 2h of spaced repetition practice over 30d.
posted by pwnguin at 1:08 AM on February 2, 2020
Not surprised. My current plan is to, once I've decided it's worth the effort start, bootstrap by using Anki to memorize the key map. I'm hoping that separating the memorization from immersion will remove some of the up front frustration, but I know immersion will be difficult in any circumstance. I just figure adding the 26 cards or so to my deck with a month lead time before immersion will skip the awkward cheatsheet phase and compress a day off adoption rate into maybe 2h of spaced repetition practice over 30d.
posted by pwnguin at 1:08 AM on February 2, 2020
Best answer: This kept bouncing around my brain and I did find another article I'd read in the past that does, in fact, lead to a Ph. D. dissertation on the subject. It even includes a meta-analysis of previous work. The bad news is that the most common result noted (that participants in basically every study up to and including the ones done by the author reported feeling less fatigued after switching to Dvorak) isn't the result the author was looking for. He wasn't trying to measure fatigue, only speed and accuracy after a set number of hours of training and practice. He found conclusively that speed increased with a switch to Dvorak across basically every study, but not that the variance of the increase (over equivalent training in QWERTY) was significant. In other words, by things he could measure he basically agreed with previous US government-funded studies that said the switch wasn't worth the added training cost. The reported decrease in fatigue does seem to be real, it's just not anything he could (or at least set out to) measure.
posted by fedward at 10:10 AM on February 3, 2020
posted by fedward at 10:10 AM on February 3, 2020
« Older What movie/show soundtrack has ‘Come On Let’s Go’... | 1918 pandemic: looking for non-fiction book... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
third hand anecdote: if you are getting RSI from typing, switching to a different keyboard key layout + (perhaps) a different physical keyboard setup (e.g. some kind of split ergonomic keyboard) + then taking the time to carefully learn how to touch type properly with the new layout can be a way to help "reset" and reduce strain on your hands/wrists.
i think part of how this works is by switching keyboard layout you force yourself to discard your old muscle memory and completely retrain.
i heard of one person (worked in IT ops, needing to type a lot at work to tend herds of machines) having success with this approach, but it might take a few weeks / months of low productivity to retrain yourself.
posted by are-coral-made at 6:39 PM on January 31, 2020 [1 favorite]