Keyboard Layouts Compared: QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak

Dvorak and Colemak are real alternatives to QWERTY. They put more typing on the home row, where the fingers rest, and by their designers' own calculations they cut finger travel. But we found no independent, controlled test showing that trained typists become much faster on either layout. The speed claims mostly trace back to the inventor of Dvorak, and the government test we found reported no gain. Switch for comfort or curiosity, and expect a long stretch of slower typing first: the government test needed 100 hours of retraining ¹, about 200 days at 30 minutes a day ².

QWERTY grew out of 1870s typewriter mechanics and its first users, not a plan to slow typists

The accounts we read place the origin of QWERTY in the early typewriter and in its first users, not in a plan to slow typists. The inventor, Christopher Sholes, kept rearranging the keys, starting from an alphabetical order. In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the second half of the alphabet, running N to Z from right to left ³. The QWERTY design is based on the layout of the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, which E. Remington and Sons sold from 1874 ⁴. The layout became popular with the success of Remington's No. 2 of 1878 ⁵.

Historians still disagree about why the letters ended up where they did. One explanation credits a study of letter pairs by Amos Densmore. Others consider that conjecture unfounded, and credit feedback from American Morse telegraph operators instead ⁶.

What the sources do not show is a plan to slow typists. The idea circulates widely, but the design histories explain the arrangement through the machine and its early users. If you want the short answer on the origin, see why keyboards use QWERTY.

No independent, controlled test we found shows that Dvorak is faster

Dvorak was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak and William Dealey as a faster and more ergonomic alternative for English ⁷. The American National Standards Institute designated it an alternative standard keyboard layout in 1982 ⁸. A standard listing means the layout is recognized, not that it is faster. The speed claim rests on a small wartime test and on a government test that did not confirm it.

The 1944 Navy test is the source of the famous number. The Navy selected fourteen typists to see whether Dvorak retraining was feasible ⁹. Dvorak reported that retraining took an average of 52 hours to bring the typists back to their QWERTY speed ¹⁰, and that by the end their Dvorak speeds were 74 percent faster, with accuracy up 68 percent ¹¹. Those are the inventor's figures. Later investigation found that the Navy experiments were at best biased and at worst fabricated ¹².

The General Services Administration then ran a test. Earle Strong's 1956 study used ten people in each group ¹³. It found that after sufficient training, Dvorak typists matched their previous QWERTY speeds but did not surpass them ¹⁴. Retraining to regain the old speed took 100 hours, more than the Navy test had claimed ¹.

In 1990 the economists Liebowitz and Margolis reviewed this record and wrote that the best-documented experiments and recent ergonomic studies suggest little or no advantage for Dvorak ¹⁶. Their article is behind a paywall, so the quote here comes through the encyclopedia article that cites it.

The school experiment reports an advantage in learning rather than in typing. Students learned the layout in one-third the time it took to learn QWERTY ¹⁵. It was run by the layout's designer, and it measures how quickly people learned the layout, not how fast they ended up typing.

We did not find a recent, large, controlled study that compares Dvorak, Colemak and QWERTY at typing speed. The tests above are the oldest evidence, and the newer studies we found test switches or phones, not layouts. For the direct question, see is Dvorak faster than QWERTY.

Colemak and Dvorak keep more typing on the home row, and their makers say they cut finger travel

Both alternatives put common letters on the home row, and the home-row share is their best-known difference. The figures below are design estimates, not timed typing results. On QWERTY, about 32 percent of typing falls on the home row ¹⁷. Dvorak's letter-frequency analysis puts about 70 percent there, with 22 percent on the top row and 8 percent on the bottom row ¹⁸. The Colemak figures give 74 percent ¹⁹, from the same comparison, which does not publish its method.

Finger travel is the second claim. Dvorak estimated that an average typist's fingers travelled between 12 and 20 miles on QWERTY, and that the same text needed only about one mile on Dvorak ²⁰. The Colemak project says QWERTY needs 102 percent more finger movement than Colemak, and Dvorak 10 percent more ²¹. Both sets of figures come from advocates, and neither publishes its test text or method, so treat them as design estimates.

Colemak is the more conservative of the two. It changes 17 keys from QWERTY and keeps most non-letter characters and many popular shortcuts where they are ²². Dvorak moves far more letters. The gap between the layouts' design goals is clear, but a design goal is not a speed result.

Motion-capture research on typing points to habits that matter on any layout. The study found three predictors of high performance. The first two are that a letter is always pressed by the same finger, and that upcoming keystrokes are prepared in advance ²³. A layout can make those habits easier, but they are also the core of touch typing, which you can practise on QWERTY. For the wider picture, see our typing speed overview, and for the numbers, average typing speed.

Switching takes long practice and moves some familiar shortcuts

Switching costs practice time, and the sources put that time in hours. The GSA study needed 100 hours of retraining ¹, which at 30 minutes a day is about 200 days ². The Navy figure was much shorter, 52 hours ¹⁰, but it comes from the inventor's own report, and the government test that followed reported a longer time.

Shortcuts are the cost most people notice first. Colemak keeps many common shortcuts in their QWERTY positions ²². Dvorak moves most letter keys, so letter shortcuts such as copy and paste (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, or Command+C and Command+V on a Mac) land on different keys, and you have to relearn them. You will also still meet QWERTY on other people's computers and on shared machines, so you will switch back and forth for a long time.

Before you switch, do the following:

1. Write down the shortcuts you use every day, such as copy, paste and undo.
2. Check which of them move under the layout you want, and decide whether you will remap them.
3. Practise at a fixed time each day, and keep QWERTY for work that cannot wait.
4. Measure your speed on the same test before you start and again after a few weeks, using the method in how typing speed is measured.

To decide whether the switch is worth the time, read is Colemak worth learning and the practical guide to how to type faster.

Comfort and strain, not speed, are the honest reasons to switch

Dvorak's designers claim that the layout lets a typist type faster and more accurately, with less strain on the hand and fingers ²⁴. The strain claim is the hardest to test, because it is about how the hands feel over months, not about a score on a test. The speed claim is at least measurable, and no independent, controlled test we found has shown it.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine says studies have not proved that typing on a computer, using a mouse or other repeated movements cause carpal tunnel syndrome ²⁵. So a new layout should be judged on how it feels to you, not on a promised cure. If you have pain or numbness in your hands, see a clinician rather than changing layouts to fix it.

The honest case for Colemak or Dvorak is therefore comfort and interest. The honest case against it is speed: you will likely spend a long stretch typing slower before you reach your old pace, which took 100 hours of retraining in the GSA study ¹. The sources do not show that you will end up faster. If you switch for comfort, measure how your hands feel as well as your words per minute, and keep the old layout available for work.

QWERTZ and AZERTY are QWERTY variants with a few keys moved

QWERTZ and AZERTY are national layouts that start from QWERTY. QWERTZ is widely used in German-speaking Europe ²⁶. AZERTY swaps the A and Q keys, and the Z and W keys ²⁷. Both are variants of the same design, not separate inventions from scratch.

The layouts themselves are defined by national and industry standards. ISO/IEC 9995 is the standard series that defines layout principles for computer keyboards, and it provides the base for national and industry standards that define the actual layouts ²⁸. That is why a keyboard's layout depends on the national or industry standard it follows.

Key switch type affected typing speed in one small 2024 lab study

The one controlled study of key switches we found is small. A 2024 laboratory study tested 33 participants on keyboards with four common switch types: red, black, brown and blue ²⁹. Tactile switches did better than linear switches in typing speed and accuracy, in pair comparisons of blue and red switches ³⁰. In the same study, turning on the backlight also improved typing speed ³¹.

Those results do not answer whether a mechanical keyboard makes you faster than a membrane or laptop keyboard. We did not find a controlled study of that comparison. The switch study used one English-language typing task with software timing, and it compared switches with each other, not with other keyboard types. Choose a keyboard for how it feels and how your hands tolerate it, not as a speed upgrade. For the direct question, see do mechanical keyboards make you type faster.