# Is anyone else baffled by the ubiquity of tiny QWERTY keyboards? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 30, 2011, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296 "2011-10-30T17:58:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/21 "2011-10-31T19:18:05Z")
[QUOTE=Merneith] Learning two keyboard layouts is way more aggravating than using the one your used to, even if you kinda-sorta know how the second layout looks. After spending thirty years with the E key third from the left, top row, I want it right where it always is regardless of how I’m punching the keys. [/QUOTE] For me, it was like learning the qwerty layout over again, although I am a fast touch typist. Contrasted with (for example) thevirtual keyboard on the WDTV, which is arranged alphabetically, I was slowed down a lot more, by virtue of “zxcvbnm” being a much less familiar sequence than “tuvwxyz.” I guess I have overestimated the tendency of this sort of thing to be left to muscle memory. Type for a few decades without looking at your fingers and this information gets abstracted from the visual vortex; it’s a brand new learning exercise. Sent with my fat fingers using Tapatalk. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/22 "2011-10-31T19:45:47Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > Yrsd , yhry od. Very quick intddde. I give this post five megalosaurus. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/23 "2011-10-31T20:02:12Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > This keyboard layout is optimized to reduce fatigue when touch typing, but scaled down so far you are either going to be using thumbs or an index finger. No, the QWERTY layout was optimized to reduce jamming of metal type. They put the most frequent letters in the most hard-to-reach positions to slow down the typist and prevent two pits of metal from slamming against the page at the same time. Thus, it was technologically obsolete for any keyboard that wasn’t designed to control swinging metal arms slamming bits of metal against a page. The reason the QWERTY layout was kept for smartphones is the same reason that it was kept for computers. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/24 "2011-11-01T16:21:51Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > No, the QWERTY layout was optimized to reduce jamming of metal type. They put the most frequent letters in the most hard-to-reach positions to slow down the typist and prevent two pits of metal from slamming against the page at the same time. Well, [not quite](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/221/was-the-qwerty-keyboard-purposely-designed-to-slow-typists). Prevent jamming yes, slow typing no. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/25 "2011-11-01T16:52:39Z")
I don’t have any devices with mini-QWERTY or mini-ABCDE keyboards, but I don’t get the difficulty of learning the latter. How different is it, really, from figuring out where the letters are when texting on a standard 12-key cell phone? ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/26 "2011-11-01T19:50:38Z")
> [@Al\_Bundy](#): > > The kids seem to type on them like they are doing 300 letters a minute in Morse code. [Not quite.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfyf5Y5AHNc) ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/27 "2011-11-01T20:00:22Z")
I am a young touch typist who has never hunt-pecked on a keyboard. I took keyboarding when I was in the 6th grade and have been an avid typist ever since. But a miniaturized QWERTY keyboard is definitely the way to go. I’ve tried to use an alphabetical layout before in certain situations and I am much, much slower. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/28 "2011-11-01T20:03:52Z")
> [@typoink](#): > > Well, [not quite](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/221/was-the-qwerty-keyboard-purposely-designed-to-slow-typists). > > Prevent jamming yes, slow typing no. From your link: > [@Cecil Adams](#): > > The early machines were crude and prone to jamming if you typed too fast. The QWERTY keyboard was designed to place the most commonly used letters on the opposite sides of the keyboard, making jamming mechanically less likely. Legend has it that the QWERTY keyboard was also made intentionally clumsy (only one vowel in the home row, for instance) i\*\*n order to slow down typists \*\*and further reduce the possibility of jamming. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/29 "2011-11-01T23:57:27Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I don’t have any devices with mini-QWERTY or mini-ABCDE keyboards, but I don’t get the difficulty of learning the latter. How different is it, really, from figuring out where the letters are when texting on a standard 12-key cell phone? It’s really not much different from figuring out where the letters are when texting on a 12-key phone. So, you DO get the difficulty. Every new and different layout requires some difficulty to learn. The only reason I can think of for additional keyboard designs would be if one was technically superior - better suited to human hands and letter patterns in words, perhaps, or better suited to fitting widely spaced keys into a small touchpad. QWERTY is appealing just because it is the best known. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2011, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/30 "2011-11-02T00:47:25Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > QWERTY is appealing just because it is the best known. I would expect that straight alphabetic is in some sense better ‘known’ than qwerty - that if you took a pool of people who had not previously used micro keyboards and presented them with 27 blank keys arranged in three rows, most people would be quicker at intuiting approximately where a letter would fall in an alphabetical arrangement than in Qwerty. The alphabetical sequence is reinforced daily through any number of.other activities. I may have overestimated the tendency of touch typists to not really store the arrangement of keys in an easily acessible way. For my part, using a tiny qwerty keyboard threw me back to the late seventies for a bit. “Wait, where’s ‘n’ again?” I figured this was likely similar for most people who are used to touch typing., and so it seems like a bad choice to me. Once again, flummoxed by the expectation that my brain processes are typical. Sent with my fat fingers using Tapatalk. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2011, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/31 "2011-11-02T08:37:44Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > The alphabetical sequence is reinforced daily through any number of.other activities. While I know the alphabet in order, it’s completely different from knowing how it would be laid out on a keyboard. I may not have perfect memory of how QWERTY is laid out, but I know the general area of every letter and symbol, so I can find it quickly. On the other hand, the alphabet may be in different numbers of rows, with different numbers of letters in each row. In video games that make you select a letter using a cursor, the layout is often alphabetical. I frequently catch myself having to stop and think for a split second about the letters near the edges. I’ll actually scoot my cursor to the end of the row before realizing that the next letter is on the next row. I wonder if you overestimate the ease of use of an alphabetic keyboard, even for yourself. Plus, what would you do about punctuation? ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2011, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/32 "2011-11-02T08:50:56Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > [Not quite.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfyf5Y5AHNc) LOOOOOOL! Nice. But seriously though, the youngsters have an edge over us geezers. Have any of you ever seen some “up-n-comer” on a chat show go “Oh I’mma totally tweet this” and the host is like “When?” and they’re all “I just DID!” I’m 40 years old and it takes me 20 minutes to post “I’m at Chili’s” to my Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2011, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/33 "2011-11-02T19:53:05Z")
> [@voguevixen](#): > > LOOOOOOL! Nice. Bit of a shame the only video of it was posted by a drooling imbecile. The operator appeared to be using an [iambic paddle](http://www.bencher.com/ham/index.php?main_page=popup_image&pID=1). ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/34 "2011-11-03T16:52:32Z")
Here’s [**speed test**](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSqRSNQwDwg), out of Calgary. The test starts at 4:00 with an explanation of how the speed key works. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296/35 "2011-11-07T03:37:31Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > From your link: RARG! If you’re gonna pull a “Read your own link,” at least _fully read the link before you snark!_ The bit you quote is the part Cecil’s semi-debunking, not the conclusion. I draw your attention to the end of the article: > [@](#): > > (3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands; and (4) the QWERTY keyboard did not become a standard overnight but beat out several competing keyboards over a period of years. I mean, the very sentence you bolded for emphasis began with “legend has it.” That’s not a very good endorsement! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-else-baffled-by-the-ubiquity-of-tiny-qwerty-keyboards/601296.md?page=1)