Birds and the bees. As the original typewriters were mechanically slower than a reasonably quick typist the keys were arranged to slow the typist down. Hence the common letters, a, s and e are used by the third and fourth finger of the left hand. Columb Healy, Staining Lancs Because typists have been trained on Qwerty keyboards since the s and noone can be bothered retraining them.
Sholes, came up with a layout that suoted the unwieldy mechanical instrument of the type. There is also a rumour that the word "typewriter" coule be typed quickly since all the letters were on one row.
Eoin C. The logic of the qwerty layout was based on letter usage in English rather than letter postion in the alphabet. Peter Brooke, Kinmuck Scotland The "qwerty" keyboard arrangement stems from mechanical typewriters. The keys are arranged to make fast typing difficult as old typewriters would easily jam. Of course humans being adaptable sorts have learned to overcome this obstructionist system and now some folks type faster than they talk, or even think. R Kenig, London UK Because when typing in English don't know about other languages you use some characters such as vowels far more frequently than others such as Z or X , and the keyboard is designed to help you reach the most frequently used keys most easily.
However, to truly benefit from this you need to learn to touch type and stop looking at the keys and prodding away with one finger. Once you learn to touch type you will wonder how you managed before. Mary, Glasgow Scotland They are arranged randomly because manual typewriters tended to jam if the user typed too fast - therefore the arrangement was intended to slow early typists down.
Now, of course, we want to be able to typer faster faster faster, so why change what we're all used to? Julie F, London because fingers do not read from left to right miche, scotland The keys on a qwerty board were designed when typewriters were mechanically driven, secretaries at the time were apparently so efficient that the arms carrying the characters and attached to the keys often got entangled, requiring the ministrations of an expensive engineer. The answer, put them where you least expect them!
Fiona Bell, Nuneaton Warwickshire This is an easy one. The qwerty typewriter keyboard was designed to keep letters commonly used together away from each other to prevent jamming.
Computer keyboards followed this because people are used to it and don't want to relearn typing, whether for a keyboard in alphabetical order or on one of those ones with all the commonly used letters in the easy to reach places.
Richard Smeltzer, Hamilton Canada This is a relic from the distant days of typewriters. The most frequently used letters were evenly spaced across the keyboard in order to reduce the amount of times the printing hammers jammed. Due to the fact that the eras of typewriters and computers overlapped considerably it was probably thought best not to alter the layout of the more modern keyboard, despite the jamming problem no longer existing.
Richard, London England Those of you who have used an old mechanical typewriter will remember how typing too fast caused all the keys to stack on top of one another, effectively jamming the machine. Early typewriters did have the keys in alphabetical order, but it was found that the keys jammed very easily with this arrangement.
To prevent it keys were moved around so that the weaker fingers were needed more frequently. This meant that people typed at a speed which the maching could handle; giving rise to the 'querty' keyboard we find today; or at least if you're English - my keyboard is French and thus 'azerty'.
Even without the mechanical difficulties, there would be no logic today in putting the keys in alphabetical order. It would make more sense to have the most commonly used keys next to the strongest fingers.
Experimental keyboards have been produced using this logic and shown to be much faster than 'querty' but the market seems stuck in its ways and not ready to innovate. This was designed deliberately to make typing a slow process, so that the hammers would'nt foul one another. There is no reason nowadays why the keys should not be in alphabetical order, except that we would all have to relearn the skill.
Brian Clayton, Glasgow U. The arrangement is to seperate letters which frequently occur consecutively in words, to eliminate jamming of manual typewriters. It is, of course, completly un-ergonomic, outdated and pretty useless.
Roll on the new standard! Clive, Bristol UK The keys can be in any order you like if you reprogramme them and stick new labels on. Normally they are in typewriter order because million so people have been trained to touch type in that system. Typewriter keys were laid out to minimise the clash of keystrokes when two adjacent letters are struck in quick succession. The trouble was that if you hit two keys quickly the levers would jam. Jams were most likely when the two keys were close together on the keyboard.
Rearranging the letters could reduce jams. Christopher Sholes was an American inventor who was most successful in reducing jams. He tried various arrangements, always trying to reduce the need to type two keys that were close together.
He sold his invention to the Remington Company in the United States. In the s, that company built and sold the first commercially successful typewriters. For years or so after the Remington typewriter arrived, vast numbers of people all over the world trained to become touch typists meaning they could type even without looking much at the keyboard. They were employed to type letters and all other kinds of things for business and government. Because so many people became so skilled at using QWERTY, it became very difficult to get everyone to change to any other key arrangement.
Many other key arrangements have been tried. It seems that we are stuck with this layout, even if jams are no longer a problem. Some other languages use variations. Ask them to show you the keyboard they use in their language.
Now, on any keyboard, feel the F and J keys carefully and find some tiny bumps. Place your first fingers on those keys, and your other fingers along the same row.
Keep your fingers resting lightly on the home keys. Type other letters by moving just one finger up or down and perhaps a little sideways.
Learn how to do that quickly, without watching your fingers, and you can touch type! This site shows the layout of the Dvorak keyboard. An independent study in showed that QWERTY typists and Dvorak typists had about the same rate of speed, and continued studies don't show a clear winner between the two [ ref ]. If you want to see for yourself, you can switch your keyboard to a Dvorak configuration just by changing a setting on your computer's operating system.
Depending on your keyboard, you may even be able to pry off the keys and rearrange them in the Dvorak layout. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar.
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