The real reasons for the qwerty keyboard

It’s pretty obvious to ask why the letters on keyboards are arranged the way they are, and the common answer I’ve heard again and again is that in the late 19th century, the manufacturers of the first widespread typewriters placed the most frequent letters as far apart as possible to slow down typists, so the keys would not jam because of typing too fast.

I accepted this explanation as plausible, but some time ago I found a website claiming this was bogus and placing frequent letters apart would actually speed up typing, because the typist could alternate hands; and in fact Dvorak advocates say the basic advantage of DSK is it allows to alternate hands heavily. I can’t find this site again, but it sounded reliable.

So what’s the truth behind it? I know that on the average DSK typing is faster than qwerty, but was slowing down typing speed really the central reason why qwerty was arranged that way?

Bonus question: Are there Dvorak-like (i.e. optimized keyboard layouts that make typing more efficient) for languages other than English as well?

IIRC, qwerty doesn’t really slow you down, but it does place letters that are commonly used together far apart, to prevent the keys from sticking together.

Your assertion that a DSK keyboard allows roughly equal use of both hands seems correct. The most prominent pattern in letter order is that vowels are more likely to follow consonants than other vowels. With this in mind you would expect to see all the vowels on the same side of the keyboard. On a DSK keyboard, this is present, but not on a QWERTY keyboard.

As for the reason for the QWERTY keyboard, I always thought the reason was to prevent the rods that print the individual letters becoming caught. On early typewriters this happened if the rods were close together, so they designed the keyboard so that letters that frequently appear together are separated. There is no connection to the speed of typing.

As they say: the master speaks

I always questioned it because E and R are right together, and those have to be used quite commonly together, don’t they?

Well, E is the most common letter in English words, thus you would find it used often with most other letters.

I think SenorBeef has a point – the digraphs ER and RE are frequently occuring in English (and I’d guess most latinate languages). From here

Sure, E, in itself, is the most frequently used letter, but it is surprising to see it on a QWERTY keyboard so close to D and S if we are to believe that the layout was designed to set frequently used digraphs at a distance.

A long time ago, I discovered a fantastic website that went into exhaustive detail about the history of typewriting and the whole QWERTY vs. DVORAK thing. I wish I had bookmarked it, and indeed I might have, but my bookmarks are so friggin’ disorganized that I can’t find a damn thing anymore…well anyway, here’s what I remember from the conclusions drawn by that site, why QWERTY won out over DVORAK in the end:

  1. QWERTY had already been learned by millions of typists by the time DVORAK came about, and to have every one re-learn a new typing standard would have consumed enormous amounts of time and resources.
  2. While QWERTY does have an odd layout, it had a huge advantage over DVORAK in that most English words were typed using alternating hands, as well as alternating fingers on one hand, which improved typing speed tremendously AND helped prevent jam-ups on early typewriters. (For instance, to use SenorBeef’s example, the very common “ER” combo involves two separate fingers, and can be typed much, much faster than, say, “ED” or “JM”.)
  3. Hmm, I can’t think of my 3rd point but I feel I must add something…“Opal” something…feh, whatever that means…
  4. In the end, while some studies did show DVORAK had a slight speed advantage over QWERTY, the advantage was nowhere near enough to justify changing all the world’s keyboards and re-training all the world’s typists. Too much work for too little gain.

Well whaddaya know, the website I talked about is the one directly linked from Cecil’s column, which was already cited above. I knew I filed it away somewhere. :smiley:

That article is by a couple of economics theorists, Liebowitz and Margolis, who were originally set on the problem because it disagreed with their theory of economics. The qwerty layout was said to be a bad layout that had been adopted for reasons that made sense a long time ago but no longer, but had become entrenched in the business. The authors advocate a theory that that is not possible, that the free market will produce the ideal solution, without government intervention.

I have this theory of economics that you can write a research paper that will support any theory of economics, if you try hard enough.

When I don’t use keyboards in my first language I always use AZERTY. Can also type on QWERTY if I think all the time about the differences but since it doesn’t have all the characters I use frequently, I don’t own any.

And you bring me something news: I never heard of the existence of a DVORAK keyboard before.

And the person who conducted the studies that showed DVORAK has an advantage? Dvorak himself, who obviously had a vested interest.

Indeed, later studies showed that Dvorak’s studies are worthless because he gave his own design such an unfair advantage.

The Great Unwashed:

I don’t think QWERTY was designed to keep the pairs of letters of frequently used digraphs at a distance so much as to keep them from being set up in such a way that they were both close together and also in an arrangement where the average fast typist could knock them out one after the other fast enough to lock them up. The “e” and the “r” are typed with the exact same finger, so you aren’t going to lock them up even if the bars are badly positioned with regards to each other.

Also, although it’s been awhile since I had a manual upright to stare at, but I seem to recall that if you pressed each key and watched which bar lifted, you’d discover that in consecutive order the bars go from top key to bottom key and only then to the next row, i.e., 4, r, f, v, 5, t, g, b, etc. – anyone care to verify or correct me on this?

Furthermore, it wasn’t necessarily the keybars that were right next to each other that were prone to jamming. The ones from way over on the far right could jam with the ones from way over on the far left as well because of the angle of the keybar where it makes the elbow bend.

I have read basic arguments and it seems to really come down to this. There were many designs. All have advantages and disadvantages to one another. And QWERTY was the format that won out.

As Beta lost to VHS as the record lost to the CD. As the CD MAY have lost to the MP3(may not definite by any means yet).

We have a history of bad formats winning over better formats.

I have tried both and it seems after a while you can adapt to either.

AHunter3, I’m a “two finger” typist (and the only thing liable to jam my keyboard is crumbs), so your post was an education to me – that’s what’s good about this place, thank you.

One thing I’m surprised no one’s mentioned is the fact that using QWERTY, you can spell “typewriter” using only the top row. I’ve heard this was so typewriter salesmen could easily demo them with this word, but, like most “facts”, I’m not sure it’s true. :slight_smile:

Well, Qwerty keyboards aren’t popular around where I live. They are rather sporadic. I can be wrong, but my guess is that Qwerty is something typical for those whose first language is English.

Probably overthere it comes down to who could become the market leader, like someone suggested.
And since many PC stuff was (at least in an early stage of the developments) exported with qwerty keyboards included, it can be that, when one looks worldwide, the use of that type is dominant.
I wouldn’t know… For as far as I witness it, this isn’t the case neither in Belgium or France, to name two on the European continent. There we use AZERTY.

I’m inclined to believe that Christopher Sholes did throw the “typewriter” spelling gimmick into the mix when he designed the keyboard. It was originally spelled as two words - “type writer”, but it does appear to be the name originally applied to the invention to market it, and it would be moderately unlikely that all the letters to spell it would have wound up on the top row if he hadn’t done it deliberately (how unlikely depends on the sort of assumptions you make about how many letters on each row of keys, what other factors were governing placement, and so on. If you randomly assigned letters with 10 letters on the top row, it’s about 4 in 1000).

No they’re not… not how typing is popularly taught. With your four left hand fingers on a, s, d, and f, the middle finger hits ‘e’ and the index hits ‘r.’

Hmmm…must’ve meant “r” and “t”. or “d” and “e”.

I really do type, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.