Glossary
Colemak
Colemak is an alternative English keyboard layout, introduced in 2006 and designed for efficient, comfortable touch typing. Its supporters describe it as the third most popular layout for English touch typing, after QWERTY and Dvorak, but that ranking has no stated method.
Updated October 16, 20262 cited facts, each traced to its source
Also called Colemak-DH, Colemak Mod-DH.
Colemak is a keyboard layout for English. Its community site describes it as a modern alternative to the QWERTY and Dvorak layouts, "designed for efficient and ergonomic touch typing in English" 1. The layout dates from 2006, and it is the newest of the three layouts most often compared.
Colemak keeps many QWERTY keys in place
The site explains the main difference from Dvorak. It says that Dvorak "moved nearly all the keys although that wasn't necessary, which made it harder to learn." Colemak is presented as the easier path for people who already touch type on QWERTY. You still have to relearn the keys it moves, so the saving is in the size of the change, not in the effort of learning.
Variants such as Colemak Mod-DH exist for other keyboard shapes. If you see Colemak-DH or Colemak Mod-DH in a list of layouts, it belongs to the same family.
How popular is Colemak?
The Colemak site says the layout is now the third most popular keyboard layout for touch typing in English, after QWERTY and Dvorak 2. Treat that ranking with care. The site gives no survey or method, so it is the community's own estimate, not a measured market share.
The evidence on Colemak's speed is limited
Colemak's supporters say it is faster and more comfortable than QWERTY. The sources we checked do not include an independent study that measures that difference, so the claim should be tested on your own typing. Compare your speed and accuracy over several weeks, once your fingers have settled into the new layout. Our guide to keyboard layouts compared sets out what the sources do and do not show.
What Colemak means for dictation
Dictation is independent of the layout. A speech tool writes the words you say, so a Colemak keyboard makes no difference to a dictated draft. Colemak matters for dictation only when you edit by keyboard afterwards. Learning a new layout is a long commitment, so it pays off most for people who expect to type for hours each day for years.
Related terms
- QWERTY: the standard layout that Colemak builds on.
- Dvorak Simplified Keyboard: the older alternative that moves nearly all the keys.
- Home row: the row of keys where the fingers rest.
- Words per minute (WPM): the unit used to compare typing speeds.
Guides and questions that cover it
Evidence
Every number on this page, with where it comes from. Open a fact to see the exact words in its source.
- 1.
- 2.
Related terms
- Typing Speed: Average WPM and How to Type FasterThe topic this term belongs to
- Articulation rateArticulation rate is the number of syllables a speaker produces per second, leaving out pauses. It measures how fast the speech itself comes out, so it is usually faster than the overall speaking rate that counts every pause.
- Characters per minute (CPM)Characters per minute (CPM) is the number of characters typed in one minute, counting spaces and punctuation. Words per minute is the same count divided by five, so a typist at 50 WPM enters 250 characters per minute.
- Dvorak Simplified KeyboardThe Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is an alternative English keyboard layout that places the most common letters on the home row. Dvorak and Dealey applied for a patent on it in 1932, but the studies that claimed it was faster than QWERTY have been criticized, and the evidence for a speed gain is weak.
- Home rowThe home row is the middle row of keys on a keyboard, where the fingers rest when you touch type. On a QWERTY keyboard it holds A, S, D, F for the left hand and J, K, L and semicolon for the right, and every other key is reached by moving a finger away from it and back.
- Hunt and peckHunt and peck is a typing method in which the typist finds each key by sight and presses it with one or two fingers, usually the index fingers. It is also called two-finger typing, and it differs from touch typing, which relies on memorized key positions and the home row.
- Keystroke dynamicsKeystroke dynamics is the identification of a person from the rhythm of their typing, using the timing between key presses as a pattern much like a handwritten signature. It is a behavioral biometric, so it supports identity checks through statistical matching rather than proving who typed.
- Keystrokes per character (KSPC)Keystrokes per character (KSPC) is the average number of keystrokes a text entry method needs to produce one character of text. A basic QWERTY keyboard scores 1, methods that need more presses score above 1, and word prediction can score below 1.
- Keystrokes per hour (KPH)Keystrokes per hour (KPH) is the number of key presses made in one hour. It is the standard unit for numeric data entry, where many jobs require 8,000 or 10,000 keystrokes per hour, and it counts keys rather than words.
- Oral reading fluency (ORF)Oral reading fluency (ORF) measures how many words a reader gets right in one minute of reading a passage aloud. Schools record the result as words correct per minute (WCPM), which subtracts the words read wrongly from the total.
- QWERTYQWERTY is the standard letter arrangement on English keyboards, named for the first six letters of the top row. Christopher Latham Sholes devised it in the early 1870s for typewriters, and it is still the layout most people type on, even though faster layouts have been proposed.
- Rollover typingRollover, or key rollover, is the number of key presses a keyboard can detect when they overlap. Two-key rollover reliably detects only two keys at once, and a matrix keyboard without diodes can register a ghost key when three keys are pressed together.
- StenotypeA stenotype, also called a steno machine, is a chorded keyboard that stenographers use for shorthand, pressing several keys together to produce a syllable or word. The NCRA's court reporter skills test sets a speed of 225 words per minute, and voice writing is a newer method that uses speech recognition instead.