dvorak
variaties
niet-dvorak

This page is currently under construction/redesign.

The Dvorak keyboard

The qwerty (Sholes) keyboard layout was developed in 1868 to prevent the keys from jamming in typewriters. On modern keyboards this obviously isn't needed anymore, and the layout now only offers disadvantages. We're still using it only because everybody else does use.

Dr. August Dvorak spent over ten years developing his keyboard, resulting in a far more superior layout:

Dvorak Keyboard Layout
  ~  !  @  #  $  %  ^  &  *  (  )  {  }  ____ 
  `  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  [  ]   BS
 ___  "  <  >                       ?  +  |
 Tab  '  ,  .  P  Y  F  G  C  R  L  /  =  \
 ____                                _  _____
 Caps  A  O  E  U  I  D  H  T  N  S  -  Enter
 _____  :                             _______
 Shift  ;  Q  J  K  X  B  M  W  V  Z   Shift

A quick overview of the pros:

Dvorak cons:

Overall I think the pros by far outweigh the cons. The only reason people don't switch, or even switch back to qwerty, is because they're alone in a qwerty world. In most cases, you can still survive though. Every modern OS can be remapped to dvorak in just a couple of seconds. And usually you can rearrange the keys of your keyboard without too much trouble. Take a look at my keyboards for example:

A picture of my own keyboards, all remapped to dvorak :)

Dvorak's disadvantages are only temporarily: as soon as more people start using it, they will disappear. Qwerty's problems on the other hand are not. It won't ever get any better. So if we'd just all convert, the world would be a better place ;)


The superiority of dvorak also shows in non-english languages, as you can read on my page on Dvorak variations. It shows a few layouts modified for other languages, and I discuss the (different) placement of special characters such as quotes, parenthesises and other signs. Also contains key location studies for german and spanish keyboard layouts.


For more information:

One of my dvorak keyboards

Key location study

I basically stole the idea from Marcus Brooks's site. It's just a test counting the words using only specified keys (for example, available words when only using keys on the home row.) However, instead of using an anagram program (which will only use each letter once), I ran the test correctly by simply using some regexps.

For my tests I used the following principles:

I tested several files: one containing the 1000 most frequently used english words, a basic american english dictionary (wenglish 1.0-12), and a list with over 350000 english words (including abbreviations!). I also tested it on the words of a english text, including duplicates, which will probably give the best reflection of normal usage.
I used the basic (us) keyboard layouts of Dvorak and Sholes, as well as an alphabetic one (consider it a "random" layout, to prove qwerty has no meaning at all), and even the arensito layout by Hallingstad.
Here are my findings:

  english text (16974)   english (1000)   english (45390)   english (354945)
dvorak qwerty abcd arensito dvorak qwerty abcd arensito dvorak qwerty abcd arensito dvorak qwerty abcd arensito
main fingers 3039 632 17 2880   58 6 0 65   384 33 0 928   1482 158 53 4145
home row 5010 718 327 3384   99 15 16 93   1202 75 90 2223   5499 381 430 10111
top 2 rows 11074 7839 5951 7309   615 372 366 375   20851 9042 12764 13719   149251 54940 74967 83360
no same hand 3831 3593 2408 1390   215 77 65 81   3988 857 929 1200   23520 4008 3828 4717
same finger 1677 3294 6234 813   127 288 432 38   9340 20272 27621 4941   86607 180960 238439 57562
no home row 217 3570 3465 212   1 146 74 5   8 1800 852 75   259 10809 4125 482
all reached 747 5727 5126 340   14 231 129 11   159 3300 1514 126   1004 20339 8708 743
left hand only 231 1285 3265 737   5 87 143 36   70 1679 2239 363   461 6478 11456 1410
right hand only 91 635 318 1948   0 19 3 39   0 138 48 402   379 640 262 2202

Compared to the qwerty and alphabetic layout, Dvorak simply rules. It's remarkable that qwerty and alphabetic are very much alike in results, which kinda proves qwerty is just as bad as any random layout.

Now, for the fun of it, I also threw in another alternative layout. The keys on an Arensito board are even more based on letter frequency than dvorak, so the results seemed a little disappointing to me. However, both layouts go much further than what I tested here. For example, with Arensito there's a much bigger chance of hitting neighbouring fingers in succession compared to dvorak. For further details check this page about the Arensito Layout.


Letter Frequency (49268)
e 11.0 h 4.4 g 2.0 ' 0.7
t 9.3 l 3.9 p 1.9 x 0.6
o 7.7 d 3.4 w 1.9 - 0.3
a 7.3 u 3.2 . 1.8 j 0.2
i 7.0 m 3.2 b 1.6 q 0.1
n 6.8 c 2.5 , 1.2 z 0.1
s 6.4 y 2.3 v 1.1  
r 5.5 f 2.1 k 1.0

A problem with the above testing method is that some words are more common than others. That's why I'm now just going to look at the letters of some random text. Note this is by no means a perfect test either: I just took text and comments out of two Slashdot articles (don't worry, I removed headers and footers: stuff like by and re.) However, this kind of test can never be flawless since everybody uses different words. Still, this will be more or less reprisentative for us. If you don't like it, you can always send me more official data.

The data on the right shows the letter occurrence for each letter (in %). Already we can recognise the letters of the dvorak home row at the top, and the dvorak bottom row at the bottom. Not very surprising of course, since Dr. Dvorak made his keyboard studying english texts much like this.

For better overview I also calculated the total occurrence of every row and column in the dvorak and qwerty layouts:

8% 9% 13% 16%   16% 14% 13% 11%    
8.1 8.9 12.8 6.1 10.0 7.1 9.2 13.7 13.3 10.4 0.3
' , . p y f g c r l   24.0%
a o e u i d h t n s - 66.7%
; q j k x b m w v z   9.2%

7% 9% 17% 22%   20% 9% 13% 3%    
7.5 8.9 17.0 8.6 12.9 13.5 6.2 9.2 13.2 2.1 0.7
q w e r t y u i o p   50.1%
a s d f g h j k l ; ' 31.5%
z x c v b n m , .   18.2%

Once again it's clear dvorak has been well thought out. Two thirds of all keypresses are on the home row, while one only has to reach down once every ten keyspresses! Qwerty on the other hand, has half its keypresses on the top row, and still nearly 20% on the bottom row. This alone explains the dancing way of typing on qwerty (since you have to go from the top to bottom row all the time); compared to the steady typing on dvorak, where your hands can stay on the home row most of the time, and rarely have to venture down.

Looking at which fingers are used also turns out to be better with dvorak. The stronger fingers are used more often, but not too often so individual fingers don't get exhausted too quickly. With qwerty otoh, you use your first fingers 42% of the time, while your right pinky is hardly used at all (quite a waste, even if it isn't as strong). Overall, dvorak is much more balanced.

Another test I found online shows similar results: 22% - 70% - 8% versus 52% - 32% - 16% for qwerty. Also in Spanish and Dutch results are very much alike.

For comparison, the other layouts:

18% 9% 6% 31%   9% 11% 15% 1%    
17.6 8.8 6.4 12.1 19.3 6.4 2.2 11.2 15.1 0.3 0.7
a b c d e f g h i j   41.6%
k l m n o p q r s ; ' 37.0%
t u v w x y z , .   21.4%

  8% 11% 14% 15%   14% 13% 16% 9%    
0.5 7.5 11.3 14.0 13.1 1.7 3.0 11.3 12.6 15.6 9.2 0.2
  q l , p   f u d k   17.1%
' a r e n b g s i t o " 65.3%
  z w . h j v c y m x   17.6%


Of course letter frequency isn't the only concern for a good keyboard layout. Dvorak has though about other things as well. Most of which I won't even know (afterall, he did years of studies, I didn't.)

One thing I noticed was the fact that common english letter sequences are typed from the outer to inner fingers (pinky to index). A few examples:

Now for the best part: these advantages should not only be good, they actually are. While typing you clearly notice how much better it is. Just try it. Dvorak Rules! =)