GUIDE
Keyboard layouts
QWERTY is the default almost everywhere and is not optimised for speed. Dvorak and Colemak rearrange letters to reduce finger travel, and both have devoted users, but the measured speed advantage is small and contested. For most people, technique is worth far more than layout.
Why QWERTY looks like that
QWERTY was laid out by Christopher Latham Sholes in the 1870s for mechanical typewriters. The usual story is that it deliberately slowed typists to stop the typebars jamming; the more careful version is that it separated letter pairs that commonly followed one another, so their typebars approached the paper from different angles and collided less. Slowing the typist was a side effect rather than the aim.
Whatever the intent, the result is a layout designed around a mechanical constraint that stopped existing decades ago. It is not optimised for finger travel, hand alternation or comfort, and everybody knows it — which is why alternatives keep being proposed.
They keep not winning, and the reason is not mysterious. Every keyboard, every colleague's machine, every shortcut and every piece of training assumes QWERTY. The economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis argued in their 1990 paper "The Fable of the Keys" that the case for Dvorak's superiority was much weaker than commonly claimed, and that the main supporting study was conducted by Dvorak himself. The debate has never fully settled.
The main alternatives
All three of the alternatives below keep the physical keyboard and change only what the keys produce. Switching is a software setting, not a purchase.
| Layout | Introduced | The idea | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| QWERTY | 1870s | Separate common letter pairs to reduce typebar jams | The default. Every shortcut and every borrowed keyboard assumes it. |
| Dvorak | 1936 | Vowels under the left home row, common consonants under the right; maximise alternation | The best-known alternative. Its advantage is disputed and its shortcut positions are awkward. |
| Colemak | 2006 | Keep QWERTY's Z X C V and most punctuation; move 17 keys | Designed to be easier to switch to. Colemak-DH is a later variant that moves two more keys. |
| Workman | 2010 | Weight keys by how comfortable the reach is, not just by row | Small, committed following. Optimises for finger strain over pure alternation. |
| AZERTY | late 1800s | A French variant of QWERTY | Standard in France and Belgium; the two national versions differ. |
| QWERTZ | late 1800s | German-area variant; Y and Z swapped, umlauts added | Standard across much of Central Europe. |
Should I switch?
Probably not, and the reasoning is worth more than the conclusion.
The honest case against: switching costs weeks of reduced speed, the measured advantage is small and disputed, you will still meet QWERTY on other people's machines and on phones, and the shortcuts you have built up — copy, paste, undo — move to positions your hands do not know. If your goal is to type faster, the same weeks spent on accuracy and on not looking will almost certainly buy you more.
The honest case for: some people find an alternative layout genuinely more comfortable, and comfort over a working life is not a small thing. If you type for many hours a day and have hand or wrist discomfort, the reduced travel is a real consideration rather than a theoretical one. And some people simply enjoy it, which is a sufficient reason for a hobby.
What is not a good reason is expecting a large speed gain. The people who type very fast on Dvorak type very fast on QWERTY too.
What about non-Latin layouts?
Here the question stops being optional. If you want to write Russian, Hindi, Arabic, Greek, Thai or Korean, you need the layout for that script — there is no choice being made about optimisation, only about which standard to learn.
Most scripts have one dominant layout and one or two alternatives, and the choice genuinely matters because they are incompatible skills. Russian has standard ЙЦУКЕН and a phonetic layout that maps Cyrillic onto the QWERTY positions of similar-sounding Latin letters. Devanagari has InScript — the government standard, and the one used in typing examinations — alongside older Remington-derived arrangements. Bengali has several. Vietnamese has Telex and VNI, which handle tone marks differently. Japanese can be typed as romaji or directly as kana.
The rule of thumb: learn the standard layout for the script unless you have a specific reason not to. Phonetic layouts are easier to start with and are a dead end if you will ever use someone else's computer, because they are not what is installed.
- Cyrillic
- ЙЦУКЕН is standard for Russian, with national variants for Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Belarusian, Kazakh and Mongolian.
- Devanagari
- InScript is the standard and the one used in typing examinations; it also covers Marathi and Nepali.
- Arabic script
- Arabic 101 is the common base, with variants for Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Kurdish.
- CJK
- Chinese, Japanese and Korean are typed through input methods — you type sounds or components and select the written form.
Questions
Is Dvorak faster than QWERTY?
The evidence is weaker than its reputation. Dvorak reduces finger travel, which is measurable, but studies showing a large speed advantage have been criticised — most prominently by Liebowitz and Margolis in 1990 — partly because the best-known one was run by Dvorak himself. Most careful summaries land on "a small advantage at best, and not worth the switching cost for most people".
Is Colemak easier to switch to than Dvorak?
Generally yes. Colemak keeps Z, X, C and V where they are — so the common shortcuts do not move — and changes fewer keys overall. That is explicitly what it was designed for.
Do I need to buy a keyboard to change layout?
No. A layout is a software setting in your operating system; the hardware is unchanged. Printed keycaps exist and are mostly useful to people who look at the keyboard, which touch typists are trying not to do.
Which layout should I learn for a non-Latin script?
The national standard for that script, in almost every case — it is what is installed on other people's machines and what examinations use. Phonetic layouts are gentler to start on and much harder to rely on.
Put it into practice
Reading about typing is the smaller half. The beginner course starts on the home row, the speed test will tell you where you stand, and all of it works in 86 languages without an account.