Does anyone here use the DVORAK keyboard layout, as opposed to QWERTY? And is anyone here able to type in both formats (sorta being "bi-lingual")?
From my own learning history (and it doesn't line up with the AI-narrated video below) the original mechanical "typewriters" had the keys in the same order as the alphabet (and, curiously, the Apple TV "keyboard layout") but some common pairs of letters (st, th) would often jam mechanically and slow the typist down. From what I'd learned (again, maybe wrong) it was Ben Franklin who designed the QWERTY keyboard, deliberately jumbled up so typists were less likely to jam two keys together.
Once computer keyboards came along, jamming of mech keys was no longer an issue, someone designed the DVORAK layout, putting the most used keys on the "home row" (where the fingers are trained to sit) and the lesser keys requiring up-down-sideways manipulation on the upper/lower rows; supposedly a much faster way to type (makes sense to me). Yet, I've never seen this layout discussed, or used.
The video below makes the absolutely BS claim that DVORAK can never enter the mainstream, because "everyone" has been trained in QWERTY; Balderdash!! Because any computer keyboard can be modified from US to UK to Italian to Sanskrit to Klington etc, via a couple mouse clicks, there's no reason we can't start at least our US kids on DVORAK from the beginning, and let everyone select what they "type" in with any machine, and get everyone in our (or your) country typing in the more-efficient DVORAK, within a couple generations.
Quick question for parents or recent HS graduates: do they even teach touch-typing in Jr High anymore? I imagine kids entering Jr High already swipe-type with their thumbs on their phones faster than I can touch-type, maybe that's not even taught anymore? I have no kids/grandkids, so not a clue.
I've no doubt there's probably an App or two in the App Store that converts our Macs to a DVORAK keyboard layout, but I haven't searched for/tried anything. For a couple decades now we've been told to NOT double-hit the Spacebar after typing a period, the word-processing software did that for you, but I've not been able to re-train my 66-yr brain to do that; so learning DVORAK now, for me, is probably something I won't try.
But, still, I'm interested if anyone here does, and how it works for you.
From my own learning history (and it doesn't line up with the AI-narrated video below) the original mechanical "typewriters" had the keys in the same order as the alphabet (and, curiously, the Apple TV "keyboard layout") but some common pairs of letters (st, th) would often jam mechanically and slow the typist down. From what I'd learned (again, maybe wrong) it was Ben Franklin who designed the QWERTY keyboard, deliberately jumbled up so typists were less likely to jam two keys together.
Once computer keyboards came along, jamming of mech keys was no longer an issue, someone designed the DVORAK layout, putting the most used keys on the "home row" (where the fingers are trained to sit) and the lesser keys requiring up-down-sideways manipulation on the upper/lower rows; supposedly a much faster way to type (makes sense to me). Yet, I've never seen this layout discussed, or used.
The video below makes the absolutely BS claim that DVORAK can never enter the mainstream, because "everyone" has been trained in QWERTY; Balderdash!! Because any computer keyboard can be modified from US to UK to Italian to Sanskrit to Klington etc, via a couple mouse clicks, there's no reason we can't start at least our US kids on DVORAK from the beginning, and let everyone select what they "type" in with any machine, and get everyone in our (or your) country typing in the more-efficient DVORAK, within a couple generations.
Quick question for parents or recent HS graduates: do they even teach touch-typing in Jr High anymore? I imagine kids entering Jr High already swipe-type with their thumbs on their phones faster than I can touch-type, maybe that's not even taught anymore? I have no kids/grandkids, so not a clue.
I've no doubt there's probably an App or two in the App Store that converts our Macs to a DVORAK keyboard layout, but I haven't searched for/tried anything. For a couple decades now we've been told to NOT double-hit the Spacebar after typing a period, the word-processing software did that for you, but I've not been able to re-train my 66-yr brain to do that; so learning DVORAK now, for me, is probably something I won't try.
But, still, I'm interested if anyone here does, and how it works for you.
