Fact · Typing and writing speed
74percent faster
Dvorak reported that at the end of the Navy study his typists were 74 percent faster on the Dvorak layout than on QWERTY, and 68 percent more accurate.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“By the end of the study their Dvorak speeds were 74 percent faster than their qwerty speeds, and their accuracies had increased by 68 percent.”
The Dvorak Keyboard, J. C. Bowen, MIT personal web page, n.d., Navy study, 1944.
Open the original- What it measures
- This is the most quoted number in the Dvorak debate. It comes from fourteen typists in a wartime experiment.
- What it does not show
- Reported by the layout's inventor. Later investigation found the Navy experiments at best biased and at worst fabricated (see the fact on that finding).