How to increase your typing speed 40-45%
Photo credit: Eugene Morgan, 500px.
I’ve been thinking of switching to Dvorak layout for a few years now, but never acted on it. The time has come, I feel. Below are a few excerpts from different blogs which will serve as a good intro.
"Dvorak estimated that the fingers of an average typist in his day traveled between 12 and 20 miles on a qwerty keyboard; the same text on a Dvorak keyboard would require only about one mile of travel. Note: in reality, the Dvorak layout gives you a 40%-45% improvement over the QWERTY layout when it comes to the distance you type”. Source: link
Matt Mullenweg (creator of Wordpress), "Just an introduction for the uninitiated, the Dvorak keyboard layout is just a different arrangements of letters purposively chosen because it is more efficient for typing the English language. For example, instead of my left hand resting on the letters ASDF it rests on the letters AOEU.
Switching is not as hard as people make it out to be. Even if you are already quite proficient at QWERTY, it’s not too hard to switch. You don’t need to buy a new keyboard, in every operating system there is a mechanism for switching what’s called the “keymap” or the mapping between the physical keys on your keyboard and what the operating system prints out. So if you switch your keymap to Dvorak you can immediately begin typing dvorak in all your applications". Source: link
"August Dvorak spent a good decade discovering the mechanics of touch typing, and used this work to design his keyboard layout. Some of his discoveries were:
It takes less effort to press a key on the home row than on the upper row.
It takes less effort to press a key on the upper row than on the lower row.
The digits on your hand vary in strength.
The strength of your digits roughly decreases from thumb to pinkie finger.
It is easier if the hands alternate when typing as much as possible.
The most common letters are E, T, O, A, I, and N, though the exact order of the last four can vary depending on the text measured. About 1/8th of all the letters typed in English will be E, and over 1/2 will be one of those six.
Consonants and vowels are commonly found in pairs". Source: link