Quick and Easy Touch Typing

With the following procedure:

If you are a good, fast qwerty typist now, you will double your speed, with less fatigue, in two months.
If you are a mediocre typist or worse, you will increase your speed several-fold (depending on how bad you are now) within one month.
Either way, you will enjoy typing more, and be able to think better while you type.

However, the following requires maturity. Not everyone is willing to accept a few days of learning in exchange for subsequent years of ease. For about the first hour, it will be tough. After that, you will be very happy as your ability grows.

Instructions:

Click here to print a diagram (shown in lower resolution below). Another browser window will open when you click. After printing, you will be instructed to close the other browser window to come back here.
From your taskbar, select
Start → Settings → Control Panel → Keyboard → Input Locales → Properties → United States-Dvorak,
and click “Okay”. Details may vary with your choice of operating system.
If you share the computer with someone who prefers not to try this, set up two input locales, one as above, and the other with your companion’s choice of keyboard layout.
Position your keyboard so that you can’t see it. If it is on a sliding tray below your desktop, push the tray in. If you can’t conveniently hide the keyboard, concentrate on not looking at it.
Put the diagram you printed in step 1 in clear view near the keyboard. (You could even use it to hide the keyboard.)
Put your fingers, other than thumbs, on the keys indicated by the colored circles. Do it by feel, not by vision (especially since you are not to see the keyboard). Your keyboard probably has little bumps on the “U” and “H” keys (but they’re marked “F” and “J”) to guide you. Your thumbs go on the space bar.
Proceed with your normal work. Whenever you don’t know which key to strike, find it on the diagram, and then on the keyboard by feel. Always use the finger indicated by the colored line for that key.

That’s all there is to it. After that first hour of hard slogging, you’ll see that it really is as easy and rewarding as I say.

Other Information:

There are interesting stories behind the keyboard layout, and some interesting people have made them available to us. I recommend these links to their information about the layout, and I think you will be interested in their thoughts on other subjects too.

Randy Cassingham
Sander Rubin
Marcus Brooks

The following links give approaches to the subject with which I disagree, but you are a different person than I am, so maybe you will prefer them:

A more structured approach.
Keyboard accessories for sale.

How It Works:

I don’t know all of the years of research that Dvorak put into this layout, but I notice the following features that seem to contribute to its effectiveness:

The vowels are all given to the left hand, and it strikes only the least-used consonants. Since, to a great extent, vowels and consonants tend to alternate, the two hands tend to alternate strokes, so that one hand can make a keystroke while the other hand is recovering from a keystroke.
The most-used keys are on the home row. The second most-used keys are on the row above it. Only relatively rarely do the fingers need to go out of these two rows.

Common two-letter combinations are particularly easy to type. For example, “TH” and “SH” fit the familiar pattern of finger drumming.

Is the Dvorak Layout Really Better?

I have read a claim that the Dvorak layout makes little or no difference. The only basis for this claim seems to be that, when anyone switches to the Dvorak layout, he/she practices to learn the new layout, and that that practice, rather than the different layout, makes the difference in speed and accuracy.

The only real point that that argument makes is that a more complex observation is necessary than a simple improvement in speed. For that, I can offer the anecdotal evidence of my own experience.

I learned to touch-type on the Scholes/Qwerty layout by the above-described “Just-do-it.” method. About ten years later, I learned to touch-type on the Dvorak layout by the same method. Thus, I learned each layout with the same degree of assiduity, and with the same level of practice, consisting of many years of routine use, but no specific training or practice sessions. On the Scholes/Qwerty layout, my typing speed asymptoted to about 25 words per minute. On the Dvorak layout, my typing speed asymptoted to about 50 words per minute.

Other than that, I think that the above explanation of “How It Works” shows a reduction in physical work per unit of output by about a factor of two.

Admittedly, these are rough numerical measures, and my own experience is only anecdotal evidence. However, it is the best evidence of which I am aware of the relative merits of the two keyboard layouts.