QWERTY Writing Center (later, QWERTY Education Services) is the name I gave to my tutoring services in 1986. Qwerty is the name for the standard typewriter/computer keyboard layout. Use of the word qwerty represents my focus on the power of the computer as a writing tool. In a way, though, I don't like pairing the word qwerty with my teaching, since it is an outdated, inefficient keyboard system that makes people work far harder and longer than they ought to have to!
Typewriters existed in various forms since the early 1700's, but the first commercially practical system was put together by Latham Sholes and his associates in 1867. It was patented the next year and refined before being adapted for manufacture by E. Remington and Sons in 1873.
The first typewriters had the keys laid out in alphabetical order, but this system had problems. The keys would easily jam when one typed with any speed at all. So one of Latham's associates researched the frequency of letter combinations in English so that he could separate the pairs on the keyboard, resulting in fewer jams when typing. It worked, but left us with the legacy of an extremely inefficient keyboard.
Why is this keyboard so inefficient? Some may think it is because the order of keys is hard to remember. This may be true to a degree, though once you've learned the order, memory is not a problem but efficiency still is. Here's why. Your fingers "live" on the Home Row (asdfghjkl;), and the most efficient keyboard design would allow you to type as many words as possible from that row alone. The qwerty keyboard allows only about fifty words to be typed without reaching for other rows.
In 1932, August Dvorak developed a new keyboard layout. His Home Row consists of AOEUIDHTNS- which includes all of the vowels as well as the most commonly used letters. On this keyboard, over three thousand words can be typed using only the home row. In fact, 70% of all the work can be done on the home row, 22% on the row above, and 8% on the row below. In addition, on Dvorak's keyboard, the right hand handles 56% of the work load and the left handles 44%, just about opposite the division on the qwerty keyboard. This is an advantage for most right handers.
How much labor does this Dvorak layout save? In one study, a group of typists was evaluated in the use of both keyboards. Those using the Dvorak keyboard moved their fingers just about one mile on an average day, while those who used the qwerty keyboard moved their fingers an average of twelve to twenty miles!
Though the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard has clearly been established, it is unlikely that it will ever catch on as the keyboard of choice. It is possible with many computers to switch the arrangement of letters to the Dvorak layout, but it seems that tradition is bound to keep the qwerty layout dominant. Right now, QWERTY Education Services has free advertising on just about every computer and typewriter in the English speaking world; if the Dvorak system ever overtakes the qwerty system in popularity, perhaps this will become the AOEUI Writing Center!
[Statistics on the Dvorak keyboard came from The People's Almanac #2, edited by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace.]
