What is Dvorak?

Dvorak may sound like some tech acronym an MIT student came up with but it is actually an alternative keyboard layout that was patented in 1936. It was designed by August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, William Dealey. They conducted an in-depth analysis of the English language and of the human hand to develop the layout that would allow faster typing and minimum hand movement. The result was the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.


Yes, this new and improved layout was originally developed in the 1930's. Unfortunately, in the 1930's if you wanted to convert to this layout, it required physically purchasing and replacing the large and expensive typewriter used at the time. QWERTY was the prominent layout then.


As legend has it, QWERTY was designed to SLOW DOWN typists. With metal hammer typewriters of the day, typing too fast caused frequent jamming and mechanical problems. To reduce these, the keys were rearranged to slow down typists and reduce jamming.


Fortunately, modern technology has overcome the need to replace keyboards. Now, all major operating systems allow you to quickly change your computer's keyboard layout. Today the only thing that stands in your way of using the Dvorak layout is a few system settings, some dedicated practice and a set of key top stickers. All of which are available in the Dvorak Simplified Conversion Package.


One of the main advantages of the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is that it has approximately 70% of the keystrokes for the English language in the home row! It has all the vowels on the home row left hand and the five most common consonants on the home row right hand. With the QWERTY layout only about 32% of the keystrokes are in the home row. Since the bottom row is the hardest row to reach only 8% of the keystrokes in the Dvorak layout are in the bottom row. In the QWERTY layout lower row usage is double.

The Dvorak layout is also designed to have more of a balance between the two hands. This starts with having the vowels on the left and most common consonants on the right but goes beyond. The most common letter combinations (digraphs) were also factored into the Dvorak layout to reduce the distance the user's fingers would have to travel.