About a year ago I discovered the Dvorak keyboard layout. It hit me, like it does most people, as a much better way to type. I have always been pretty quick at typing – generally around 110 WPM with bursts over 130WPM. I decided to take up Dvorak and work on learning it.
Somehow, again like many people, I lost track of learning it and went back to using Qwerty for the next year and didn’t think about it again. A little over a week ago I stumbled upon a website talking about Dvorak and I thought “Oh ya!”. While I was looking through the comments I found someone who mentioned that the Colemak layout was superior to Dvorak. It turns out that they were right. I won’t spell it all out, but the Colemak website has a page devoted to nothing but how it is better than Dvorak. Not better by a huge amount, but enough that if you are starting out, you should go with Colemak instead of Dvorak.
Many people in the forums area have discussed their experiences thus far in the switch to Colemak. A couple have succeeded very swimmingly, and others decided to give up and go back. I decided to track my progress using, no surprise here, Google. As many of you know, I’m a bit of a Google fan boy anyway. You can see the chart that will map my progress as I get faster at Colemak below this section. Here are my thoughts thus far at each of my readings. They were tested using the test found here. It isn’t the most ideal place to test, but I needed a test that allows two spaces after sentences as that is how I learned to type. On tests that only allow one space I end up double tapping the space bar after every sentence slowing my score considerably. Anyway…onto the data and my thoughts.
I’ll continue to update this as I progress.
Day 1
QWERTY Speed – 107 WPM
Colemak Speed – 7 WPM
Comfort Level
These test were taken about 4 hours into messing with the keys and staring at a printed out version of the keyboard. I had just barely memorized where the keys were, but had to think about each and every one. 7 WPM may even be a little fast, but that was my score, so I’m reporting it.
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Although I hadn’t found myself using Dvorak in about 8 months or so, I found myself reaching for the Dvorak keys. I had no idea where the L, R, and E were on the Dvorak layout, but if I had to hit the keys – and they weren’t in the normal spot…my fingers went to the Dvorak spot. That made things tough right off the bat. Other than that, it was the normal “new keyboard layout” blues as well as a bit of frustration. Nothing really to say here other than it pretty much sucked.
Day 2:
Qwerty Speed – 105 WPM
Colemak Speed – 13 WPM
Comfort Level
Things were a little better today. I knew where all of the keys were without looking, although I generally had to take a split second to think about it. Things were very slow, and I was not able to type continuously even very slow. I find that certain letters are tougher than others. The R & S keys are constantly being reversed, and I find myself using doing a rapid wrong key thing quite a bit. I’ll type “L” for instance incorrectly. Then I’ll backspace it, then hit “L” again, then backspace it and hit “L” again before my mind can figure out why the wrong key was showing up. It was sort of like my mind had switched back to fast typing mode and just wanted the damn “L” key to work. I would have to stop and think about it for a minute, and then I could continue.
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At my job, I write large failure reports consisting of between 7 to 30 pages of text and pictures. Normally my fast typing speed helps me bang these out very quickly, so I could really only afford to use Colemak when I was typing something slow. There is no way I could go “cold turkey” like some have.
I want to mention how awesome the backspace key is. For those of you not on the colemak forums…Colemak replaces the caps lock key with another backspace. That way your left pinky finger can hit the backspace without removing three fingers from the home row. It is fantastic. I haven’t used the caps-lock key in probably 5 years on purpose. It is more of a nuisance than anything else for me.
Day 9:
Qwerty Speed – 101 WPM
Colemak Speed – 27 WPM
Comfort Level
Things are better now. I have made it to level 5 on the typing lessons suggested by the Colemak site. I’m taking things pretty conservatively on that program, and only moving forward when I can type the whole lesson continuously and get over 97%. That usually means getting an average score of about 27 WPM or so.
I haven’t looked at the Colemak diagram in days and know where all the letters are close to immediately. The home row is getting to be second nature and less of a discrete thought before I hit each key. I’ve learned the pattern for a few words that lets me “burst” those out and move on to the next word quickly. When I type in Qwerty, I do that with tons of words. That is one of the reasons I can achieve the speeds that I do. I almost never actually think in terms of letters, but more in terms of “finger shapes” to words. I’m not sure if that is the same for everyone who types quickly, or something quirky about me in particular.
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I’m starting to get fast enough to understand the smoothness that everyone describes. My fingers tend to do everything a little more gracefully in Colemak albeit more slowly. I’ve found that if I try to go quickly I make tons of mistakes. My fastest and smoothest way to type is to slow down and move at a steady unchanging pace. When I do that, the next letter will be in my head as I type the one before it. So in “race” I hit “r” as I think of “a”, then by the time I need to hit the “a” I know where it is already. This is certainly not the way to be fast in the long term, but it is working the best at this point. I’m at 27 WPM now using that method, and it seems to be working well.
I am making a very hard push to keep up my Qwerty speed as I learn Colemak. I use my speed often at work to get through things quickly, and I’m not willing to sacrifice that speed. So I may learn Colemak at a slightly slower rate than others. We’ll see.
I have noticed that during normal boring typing I tend to make timing mistakes more often in Qwerty. I’m finding that in words like “group” and “things” I type “gruop” and “thigns” when I try to go fast. I haven’t ever had problems with the timing before, so it may be Colemak related.
Day 13:
Qwerty Speed – 98 WPM
Colemak Speed – 34 WPM
Comfort Level
Today was the first day that I used Colemak the entire day. It wasn’t that I was much faster, but the work I was doing allowed it. I hate typing the word “you” in Colemak, and I constantly find myself typing a “p” when I want an “f”. I wonder if that is normal…
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I found myself making a huge number of errors and simply backspacing. I’m not going to deal with it just yet, but when I am comfortable, and plateau initially, that will be where I spend my time at first.