How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

&gt; One week or so ago I switched from Colemak to typing on QWYRFM due to the reduced load it places on the pinkies.<p>I typed Dvorak for 10 years before I started getting RSI again in my right ulna. It turns out that the &#x27;S&#x27; key being hit by the pinky in Dvorak caused me a lot of pain.<p>I ended up switching to BEAKL, a pretty obscure layout which is specifically made to alleviate stress on the pinky. It moves the relatively common S key to the right hand pointer finger, for instance.<p>It turns out that the theory underpinning the dvorak layout assumes that homerow hits are strictly better than upper and lower row, but the pinky and ring finger are such weak fingers that it&#x27;s often better to move the index or middle fingers up or down a row than hit a key on the home row with the pinky.

I switched to Dvorak in my 20&#x27;s. I don&#x27;t think i got faster, but my right-hand wrist which would irritate me and was one reason for the switch, definitely was more comfortable after, and hasn&#x27;t given me any problems since.<p>That said, switching was a huge pain in the ass.... like horrible for the first two months, and i promised myself i&#x27;d keep typing in both. However, i eventually lost the ability to type in qwerty, after about two years, but i honestly don&#x27;t care, i genuinely love Dvorak.<p>The biggest concern most people probably don&#x27;t think about is keeping shortcuts like CTRL+X&#x2F;C&#x2F;V&#x2F;S&#x2F;F, which apple thankfully has a layout for &quot;Dvorak-CMD-Qwerty.&quot; The shortcuts are very obviously put where they are so you can toggle them quickly. Many programs don&#x27;t account for this layout, which is why I wrote an Intellij IDE key mapping for it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;scoofy&#x2F;Intellij-IDEA-Dvorak-QwertyCMD-keymap" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;scoofy&#x2F;Intellij-IDEA-Dvorak-QwertyCMD-key...</a><p>The layouts that i think don&#x27;t get enough love, are the one-handed dvorak layouts designed for amputees.<p>The idea that, in the end, the author suggests <i>yet another standard</i> seems a bit absurd to me.

&gt; In other words, the idea is that QWERTY was designed so that humans would type as slowly as possible in order to prevent mechanical jamming.<p>Nope. That&#x27;s an oft cited story but it&#x27;s not true. The point of QWERTY was actually to increase typing speed. The debunking of this is pretty well documented these days (there even a note on wikipedia: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;QWERTY#Properties" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;QWERTY#Properties</a>) so it&#x27;s disappointing an article as researched as the one submitted here has made such an easy to check mistake.<p>But I think the bigger trap it falls into, and the same trap many on HN fall into when posting their anecdotes too, is that RSI isn&#x27;t universally equivalent. It depends on hand sizes, the keyboards you use, any other hand exercises one might do, underlying health conditions, and even just how you hold your hands at the keyboard. So what might help alleviate RSI for one person could easily make it much worse for another person.

This is a really good review.<p>Anecdotally, some years back I started developing pretty bad RSI from typing. I was also a pretty mediocre typist. So I switched to Dvorak and got serious about touch-typing. I found it much more comfortable and since then I&#x27;ve never had any problems with typing-induced RSI.<p>With QWERTY, I was doing all sorts of things to try to stop the RSI. I tried to control the position of my wrists, the angle of my hands, how I hit the keys. I experimented with wrist rests. Since I switched to Dvorak I found I didn&#x27;t need to pay attention to any of that. I can type virtually continuously for hours at a time at &gt;100wpm, and while my speed will drop from my hands and the muscles in my forearms getting tired, even at that point I don&#x27;t get RSI.<p>I had another set of RSI not that long ago, but I determined that was due to using my pinky on the ctrl key in emacs. That&#x27;s a pretty well known problem, but I had used emacs for quite a few years without it being an issue. At that time, though, I had started using org-mode in a big way and was using a lot of C- bindings, and hitting it that often turned out to be a problem after all. Swapping ctrl and caps lock (and using my ring finger for it) fixed it entirely.<p>Even if the studies say that the difference in speed is marginal, I&#x27;m convinced based on my subjective experience that Dvorak is much more comfortable. That&#x27;s difficult to quantify, though, and conducting a high-quality study to conclusively demonstrate it is extraordinarily difficult.

Personal anecdote, but I know a few people who got RSI&#x2F;CTS and had a chance to watch them type --- and what they all had in common was how &quot;stiff&quot; their typing posture was, and the strength at which they hit the keys. They weren&#x27;t fast either, probably in the 50-70wpm range. One of them, before he got RSI, even commented on how bad my posture was and how it&#x27;d &quot;make it easier to injure myself&quot;.<p>I find that relaxing, as counterintuitive as it may sound at first, actually helps with typing speed and comfort. To me it makes sense that if you tense up all your muscles and punch the keys really hard, you&#x27;re much more likely to injure yourself, slow down, and tire more quickly. I think the vast majority of keyboards also have too high of an actuation force, which also adds to the strain of typing. If you look at videos of fast typists (150wpm+), they don&#x27;t look like they&#x27;re exerting much effort at all; many of them aren&#x27;t using the &quot;standard&quot; key-to-finger mapping, and a lot of them &quot;smear&quot; their hands all over the keyboard. Here&#x27;s one example (not me):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Y4NUqoXI8Xw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Y4NUqoXI8Xw</a>

I switched to Colemak 4 years ago or so, and I think it is one of the best investments of my time ever made. Yes, you will feel similar to that feeling you get when you write with your left hand (something like, why tf I&#x27;m doing this, if i&#x27;m perfectly capable of living my life as I have been doing before), but it is a skill that will benefit you all your life and I would recommend you to do so.<p>Still, it is not perfect. The pinky getting tired is something that happens, but it is still so much better than QWERTY. I don&#x27;t think I will try that QWYRFM layout, as I haven&#x27;t felt big pain since switching (before switching I felt some pain, but after, I slightly feel something, but after a lot of effort, and not enough to feel worried). And I think if I start feeling something to worry, there are some things I could do before, like using a split keyboard, or optimizing the desk height, before switching to another layout.<p>Again, try Colemak (or if you want to try any other layout, welcome). It will do good for you.

In my modest experience, most people who have issues with RSI and especially carpal problems, they almost universally use Emacs! It is such obvious thing.<p>I know you can remap keys or whatnot, but if you look at people experimenting with layouts and trying to resolve RSI problems, it is always Emacs.<p>I used emacs briefly, not long enough to say, but it seems pretty obvious where the problem is. I understand why people don&#x27;t want to change their favorite editor.

The bigger problem is not the layout it’s the keyboard itself, if you have rsi switching to an ergodox can improve the situation, if this is not enough something like a dactyl manuform or a kinesis advantage 360 should do the trick. This combined with light switches like tactile (MX brown) or linear (red) will reduce your pain immensely.

&gt; Uncomfortable pinky movements<p>Any keyboard layout that leads to more ulnar deviation is simply a no-go for me. So Dovrak and Colemak are out, evidently (never tried them, but TFA says they use the pinky more, so if I believe that then I must not use them). Ideally the pinky should not be used <i>at all</i> for typing.<p>I&#x27;ve had to teach myself to not use one-handed modifier keystrokes that involve ulnar deviation. The key to this, for me, has been the <i>sticky keys</i> accessibility feature -- it works fantastically well for me. If you&#x27;ve never heard of sticky keys before then I highly recommend you look it up and try it. It&#x27;s not that that I type every modifier combination keystroke using sticky keys, but that using sticky keys helped me unlearn bad habits.<p>Another key to this, for me, is to use vim and not emacs. Modal editing means not relying on modifier keys -- conversely, non-modal editing means being extremely dependent on modifier keys. IMO reaching for modifier keys is probably half the RSI picture, with resting wrists while typing being the other half.

&gt; In Pan &amp; Schleifer (1996), subjects experienced more arm discomfort&#x2F;pain&#x2F;fatigue the more keys they pressed while doing a data entry task.[23] Finally, Feng et al. is a recent (2021) cross-sectional study that found that “prolonged computer use time and working without breaks were associated with presence of wrist&#x2F;hand symptoms”.[24] But of course correlation is not causation, and there are many potential confounders here, e.g. maybe people who spend lots of time at the computer exercise little, and it is the lack of exercise, not computer use, that causes problems.<p>I generally agree with this. I&#x27;ve found that I have less wrist pain now that (1) I&#x27;ve gotten a better mouse and (2) I work out my wrists and forearm occasionally. I think the keyboard is a much smaller cause, especially since a lot of repetitive stress comes more from gaming and use of mice for me.

My own experiments with this point to similar conclusions. QWERTY is not laid out that badly, really, and for me (with no RSI problems, yet) the benefits of using the default, especially being able to type on other people&#x27;s computers, far outweighed any benefit from the alternate layout (Workman). However, the excursion was completely worth it for me - I switched in the first place because I never learned to touch type properly, and figured it would be easier and more fun to learn from scratch on a new layout. That was true, and soon I found I&#x27;d entirely forgotten QWERTY, so I re-learned that from scratch, touch-typing, and am about as fast and accurate as I was on the alternate layout. Blog post after all that: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patricksanan.org&#x2F;personal&#x2F;adventures-in-keyboarding-part-iii.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patricksanan.org&#x2F;personal&#x2F;adventures-in-keyboarding-...</a>

&gt; Some forward-thinking people have set about evaluating key layouts objectively on metrics like these.<p>[...]<p>&gt; What If You’re Bilingual?<p>On that topic some might be interested in this little analysis:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bclnr&#x2F;kb-layout-evaluation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bclnr&#x2F;kb-layout-evaluation</a>

I&#x27;ve been typing english and only english on Dvorak for 6 years. For my needs, I am very happy with it. There is one point I would like to make that the author misses (and it&#x27;s not unique to Dvorak).<p>Learning an alternative layout can make you a better typist for the sole reason of requiring effort to learn it. When most of us type with QWERTY, it is effortless, however we also carry with us all of the bad typing habits we&#x27;ve accumulated over time - all of the stuff we did <i>wrong</i> on a QWERTY board out of habit that our typing classes tried to condition out of us but it still remains. When you try to learn a new layout, you&#x27;re putting in more effort than ever before into typing with correct form. That alone is a big factor for why non-QWERTY typists perform better.

I had an RSI issue where it was uncomfortable to reach for the H key and I was convinced existing layouts didn’t take this into account. I also thought that learning new keys was overrated so I attempted to generate keyboard changes with the least number of key changes from qwerty and with significantly less side-to-side motion. The results were very promising and then after trying them out for a bit it turned out Minimak-8 felt better to type on. Big shoutout to Minimak even if it didn’t help my H key :)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.minimak.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.minimak.org&#x2F;</a>

What the author may be missing is that keyboards are much, much better now than they were in the 1990s, when RMS was having problems. The touch is much lighter, the amount of force needed to depress the keys is much less. Hitting control-alt-meta-cokebottle-Q for everything to make Emacs work on an early 90s keyboard was a recipe for pain.<p>I&#x27;ve been typing on computers for almost as long as RMS has, don&#x27;t have those problems.<p>I guess I should mention that I have my own self-taught touch typing style. I only use eight fingers, except for using my left pinky finger for the shift key. Works for me.

It&#x27;s amazing how there seems to be more talk about layouts than ways to type less in the first place.<p>What we really need is a study on RSI and productivity vs overall workflow.<p>We already know Vim guys can edit code fast, what we need to know is who does best on a real world project with more debugging, research, and documentation reading than coding, how much IDE autocomplete helps, whether the 10 clicks and 2 minutes it takes me to do something is healthier than the 3 lines and 30 seconds it takes a CLI user, etc.

The problem of RSI isn&#x27;t QWERTY, the problem is putting all your fingers on the home row.<p>Type with your hands at an angle, and your wrists inline with your arms and palms. Problem solved.

Myself, I had already switched to Colemak when I developed RSI due to heavy typing at my work. What did it for me was the unnatural position of my hands, wrists bent upwards and outwards in order to fit onto the &quot;tiny&quot; laptop keyboard.<p>The solution was simply to switch to a run-of-the-mill ergonomic keyboard (ERGO K860) and surprise, surprise, my RSI lessened and eventually disappeared in 2 weeks or so.<p>So, for me it was definitely the hand posture, NOT the layout that caused the problems!

The old story that QWERTY was intentionally created to be slow to type is a myth: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.woot.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;post&#x2F;the-debunker-was-the-qwerty-keyboard-designed-to-slow-down-typists-1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.woot.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;post&#x2F;the-debunker-was-the-qwerty-k...</a>

I&#x27;ve been typing on QWERTY for over 40 years now, and have been an extensive Emacs user for decades, and luckily never had an issue with RSI. So, I wonder to what extent genetics play a role? What is the percentage of (heavy) QWERTY users that run into RSI issues at some point in their lives?

I used to type using the Dvorak layout when I was in high school. I gradually lost the ability to type in QWERTY at all. When I took the GRE I learned it would have to be in QWERTY, so I just switched back. I used QWERTY ever since.

I had been programming since I was 11 years old (now 30 years old professional programmer). I’ve spent innumearable hours at computer keyboard. I can type QWERTY and Russian layout blindly both and I constantly use both.<p>Never had any issues with my wrists or finger pain.<p>What am I doing wrong?<p>Just to be clear I am not trying to say that people who use DVORAK are wrong. It’s just that you tend to forget there’s a huge population of people who due to their regional issues can’t even use DVORAK and most of them don’t have that problem with the wrists.<p>Maybe the only reason you had those issues is because the only time you actually learnt how to properly type on the keyboard is because you properly spent time learning how to blind type comfortably in DVORAK?

Tbh, typing speed doesn&#x27;t matter much to me: I still need to think, which usually takes much more time than converting those thoughts into keystrokes.

So, scientists didn&#x27;t confirmed qwerty or things like that directly cause RSI&#x2F;CTx...<p>But lets keep discussing that ! Let&#x27;s circle from qwerty to dvorak and back again, with some minor route twiks to more exotic layouts...<p>Pleas stop...<p>R. is the problem ! &#x27;R&#x27; like in &#x27;repeat&#x27;. Programmer or pianist or pro-gamer or violinist or baker or whatever !<p>It&#x27;s self abuse - Stellman wrote big parts of Emacs, gcc, some OS, other things while using mail and lists. jzw wrote Netscape, screensavers and other things. Other examples ?

&gt; Colomak favor the right hand ... asymmetry.<p>Has anyone explored the effects of duplicating keys across hands?

Has anyone successfully adopted the engram layout?

Switch Control and Caps Lock.