Caitlin Woodward

Most of my readers probably already know a little bit about the Dvorak keyboard layout. If not, I highly recommend the web comic zine, The Dvorak Zine. It goes through the history of the keyboard, why we have QWERTY, and the benefits of the Dvorak layout.

I don't even remember how I found out about the Dvorak keyboard layout. I don't even remember the real reason I wanted to switch. I had a pretty awesome typing speed on QWERTY. I think I just read so many good things about it that I wanted to try it. It took me a few tries to finally switch over. I don't even remember when I first started.

The first time I tried to change over, I don't think that I even switched my keys around. I just tried to learn by touch typing. It went pretty well. I went through some typing lessons specially designed for Dvorak. I only made it throught the home row lessons plus a couple more. It was weird how natural it felt from the beginning. I remember typing classes in high school, and the first half of it was horrible. "ffff jjjj fjfj fjfj ffjj ffjj". The early Dvorak lessons were similar, but very quickly you were typing real words. This was because all the vowels were on the home row, along with the most common constanants.

I ignored advice that said once you decide to learn Dvorak, don't switch back and forth between the two layouts until you fully learn Dvorak. Well, deadlines at work and school were pushing, so I switched back to QWERTY, and didn't switch back.

Months passed. Lots of me telling myself I was going to switch back over. Even Scout was pestering me, "When are you going to switch back to Dvorak?" One time I even rearranged the keys on an external keyboard at work and would use that every so often. That didn't last long.

Last summer, I decided that I was going to rearrange the keys on my Macbook, and I wouldn't switch back until I had reached my old typing speeds. So I rearranged my keys one afternoon. It was interesting, because for some silly reason, and this is kind of hard to explain, the F and the J on my keyboard were printed sideways, and because of this, the key connectors were also sideways, so that the letters would look correct. As a result, when I rearranged my keys, the F and and the J were both sideways on their new spots, because the key connectors were the regular way. And, the keys that took the old F and J spots were also sideways, because they were regular keys and the key connectors were not.

As a side story, for some reason, I went into the Apple Store (we were in Seattle at the time) to talk to someone about this. I don't know, I thought maybe I could get a couple new keys printed, Apple can be weird and cool like that sometimes. Walked in, found someone that seemed pretty competent, and I told him that I had a really strange problem. He kind of took this as a challenge and replied, "Try me." So I took my MacBook out and described the issue. He just kind of looked at me blank-faced, "Uhh..." and all he coud suggest was to find some keyboard covers.

Anyway, so this time I lasted about a week. I was definitely improving, but it still took so much to do stuff. I liked typing in Dvorak, but as soon as I had to write a somewhat lengthy e-mail, it felt like it was going to take forever to write. Popped out my keys and rearranged them back.

Lots of time passed. More of me telling myself I was going to learn Dvorak. I guess it took until about early spring of this year to switch again. I rearranged my keys, and told myself that this was it. I was not going to switch back to QWERTY this time. Third time's a charm. And I did it. It's crazy, because as soon as I made the mental switch back to Dvorak, it was like I had never stopped. Within ten minutes, I was right back to where I left off. And about a week and a half or so after that, I was right back up to my QWERTY speeds.

And I stuck with it. I had been typing it for a few months, when I started to think, "Hmm... my fingers don't really feel much better." All those Dvorak articles talked about how you had to move your fingers so much less. It wasn't until one day when I sat down at a computer and typed in QWERTY for an hour, and I started to think, "Wow. The keys are so far apart, I have to move my fingers so much," that I noticed that there really is a difference.

It's pretty easy for me to switch back and forth now. If I hop onto another person's computer, I can flip the mental switch and type in QWERTY just fine. Sometimes I like to give the analogy of driving a stick shift versus an automatic car.

In the end, I love typing in Dvorak. It's kind of difficult to explain why. It just feels good I guess. Natural. Not to mention the geek points you get from it.