QWERTY vs Dvorak vs Colemak

What each layout changes, what the studies found about speed, and what switching really costs.

Test your speed on any layout

On a QWERTY keyboard, only about a third of the letters you type are on the home row, the row where your fingers rest. On Dvorak it's about 70%, and on Colemak about 74%. Less reaching sounds as if it should mean faster, more comfortable typing, and that one number is most of the case for switching.

Whether switching is worth it for you is a different question, with a less exciting answer. Here is what each layout does, what the evidence says about speed, what a switch really costs, and who should give it a go.

The three layouts side by side

Shares of letters (not spaces or punctuation) in English text, worked out from Peter Norvig's letter frequencies for Google Books. Colemak-DH, a popular variant, puts about 69% on the home row by the same count.

What each layout is trying to do

QWERTY

QWERTY was shaped in the 1870s around a typewriter, its jams and its early users, not around how often each English letter turns up. Half of what you type is on the top row, and common words like “was” and “were” come entirely from the left hand. The full story is in why the keyboard is QWERTY.

Dvorak

August Dvorak and his brother-in-law William Dealey patented their Simplified Keyboard in 1936. They put the vowels A O E U I under the left hand on the home row, and the most common consonants, D H T N S, under the right. The idea was for the hands to take turns and the fingers to stay home. In the early 1980s it became an official alternative layout in an American national standard (ANSI X4.22-1983), and it has been built into Windows and Macs for many years.

Colemak

Shai Coleman released Colemak on 1 January 2006 as a gentler change. It moves only 17 keys, keeps Z, X, C and V where they are so the shortcuts for undo, cut, copy and paste don't move, and leaves most punctuation alone. It puts slightly more of your typing on the home row than Dvorak does. Since Windows 11 version 24H2 it has come with Windows; Macs and Linux have included it for longer.

Colemak-DH and Workman

Colemak-DH, introduced in 2014 by a Colemak user known as SteveP, moves D and H from the middle of the home row down to the bottom row. On plain Colemak those two letters make the index fingers stretch sideways; on DH the fingers curl down to them instead. It gives up a little home-row use for what its fans describe as a more natural hand position.

Workman, published by OJ Bucao in 2010, takes a similar view. It ranks keys by how comfortable they are to reach rather than chasing the home row at all costs, and puts about 67% of letters there.

Does switching make you faster?

This is the claim that sells alternative layouts, and it's the one with the least behind it.

The famous evidence for Dvorak is a 1944 US Navy experiment, which reported that typists retrained on Dvorak quickly beat their old QWERTY speeds by a wide margin. Dvorak himself was involved in running it, and later critics found the comparison lopsided. In 1956 the US General Services Administration ran a more careful test, led by Earle Strong. Typists retrained on Dvorak needed far more training than the Navy figures suggested just to match their old speeds, and after that they improved more slowly than a matched group who were given extra QWERTY practice. Dvorak's supporters dispute it in turn, arguing that Strong had made up his mind against new keyboards before he began.

In 1990 the economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis went through the whole record in “The Fable of the Keys” and found virtually no reliable evidence that Dvorak beats QWERTY. There hasn't been a large, controlled modern trial since. Most of what you'll read online comes from people who switched and are pleased they did. That's real experience, but it tells you little about the layout: people who switch are usually enthusiasts who practise a lot, and practice alone makes people faster.

What alternative layouts do change, for certain, is movement. More letters sit on the home row, the fingers reach less, and by their designers' own analyses fewer letter pairs fall to the same finger. Whether that turns into speed depends on the typist. Barbara Blackburn, once listed by Guinness as the fastest typist in the world, typed on Dvorak, but fast typists turn up on every layout. (More in the fastest typists in the world.)

What about wrist pain?

Many people switch because their hands hurt, and some say it helped. There's no good controlled evidence that a layout prevents or cures repetitive strain injuries. Posture, the height and position of your keyboard, regular breaks and how hard you press are better places to start: see typing posture and hand position. If you have pain, numbness or tingling that doesn't go away, see a doctor or physiotherapist before reaching for a new layout.

What switching costs

The cost is mostly time, and it's bigger than it looks from the outside.

You start again from scratch. A 70 WPM QWERTY typist on their first morning of Dvorak hunts for every key like a beginner. Expect weeks before the new layout is comfortable for real work, and months before you match your old speed if you practise for minutes a day rather than hours. Even in the 1956 study, typists needed far more retraining than the Navy figures had promised just to get back to where they started.

Your QWERTY gets rusty unless you keep using it, and you'll meet QWERTY everywhere: other people's computers, work laptops where you can't change the settings, and job typing tests, which use whatever keyboard the employer has.

Shortcuts move. On Dvorak, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V end up spread across the keyboard. Macs have a layout called “Dvorak – QWERTY ⌘” that switches to QWERTY while you hold Command, which helps there. Colemak avoids the problem by leaving those keys alone.

The letters printed on your keys won't match unless you rearrange or replace the keycaps. That's no problem for a touch typist and a real one for anyone who still glances down. And your phone will most likely stay on QWERTY, so you'll be using two layouts every day either way.

Who should switch, and who shouldn't

Consider it if you already touch type, spend hours a day at a keyboard, mostly use your own computer, and are curious enough to enjoy a slow month. It's also a fair choice if you're learning to touch type from scratch and have no habits to unlearn, since you'll be slow at first either way.

Don't switch for speed. If you want to type faster, the same weeks of practice spent on QWERTY will usually get you further, because you start from your current speed instead of zero. Skip it too if you share computers a lot, do most of your typing on a phone, or have a job typing test coming up: the test will almost certainly be on QWERTY, or your country's version of it.

Dvorak or Colemak?

If you've decided to switch, Colemak is the easier move from QWERTY. Fewer keys change, the shortcuts stay put, and Windows, macOS and Linux all include it now. Colemak-DH is worth a look if the sideways stretch to D and H bothers you. Dvorak has the longer history and has been available on every computer for much longer, which still helps on machines you don't control.

Both are reasonable choices. Picking one and giving it a fair run matters far more than which one you pick.

How to try a layout for a few weeks

1. Add the layout. On Windows 11, open Settings, then Time & language, then Language & region; open the options for your language and choose Add a keyboard. On a Mac, open System Settings, then Keyboard, then Text Input, choose Edit and add the layout from the list. On Linux, look in your desktop's keyboard settings.
2. Keep a picture of the layout on screen and leave your keycaps where they are. Not being able to look down is good practice.
3. Practise for 15 to 20 minutes a day, and switch back to QWERTY for real work while you're still slow. On Windows, Win+Space switches layouts; on a Mac, use the input menu in the menu bar.
4. Measure. The typing tests on this site read the characters you type, so they work with Dvorak or Colemak set in your operating system. The lessons, the on-screen keyboard and the finger statistics follow the standard layout for each language, though, so ignore those while you're on a different layout. A daily one-minute test is enough to see the trend.
5. Decide after a few weeks, not a few days. The first few days always feel hopeless.

If you decide QWERTY is fine after all, nothing is wasted: you'll have a much clearer sense of what good finger movement feels like. Put it into the habits that make the biggest difference on any layout, starting with the home row and how to type faster.

Sources

• August Dvorak and William L. Dealey, US Patent 2,040,248, granted May 1936.
• American National Standards Institute, ANSI X4.22-1983, “Alternate Keyboard Arrangement for Alphanumeric Machines” (now INCITS 207).
• S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, “The Fable of the Keys”, Journal of Law and Economics 33(1), 1990, including their account of the 1944 Navy and 1956 General Services Administration studies.
• Colemak, colemak.com: the layout, its FAQ and its notes on Windows 11 version 24H2.
• SteveP, “Colemak Mod-DH”, 2014.
• OJ Bucao, “The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy”, workmanlayout.org, 2010.
• Apple, “Use Dvorak keyboard layouts on Mac”, Mac User Guide.
• Peter Norvig, “English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited”, 2013 (letter frequencies used for the home-row and top-row shares).