There's no place like home row, am I right? "ASDF" and "JKL:" aren't just the keys our fingers rest upon, they're our friends. Fine, that may be a bit much, but nosotros take all undoubtedly come a long mode from typing our very outset letters. In my earliest days of typing, the keyboard setup was disruptive and random despite all the fun games on my Typing Teacher CD-ROM.

Eventually, navigating the layout became second nature, and hither I am today, typing at reckless speeds without then much as needing to await down. 7-year-onetime Devin would be quite impressed. Information technology's probably condom to say that many of us don't know much about what lies beyond the standard QWERTY keyboard. But in that location's so much more than. So much.

Let's take a look at some popular and regional keyboard layouts. They probably won't take you switching someday soon, but it's worth a peek. The more you know, and all that.

Note: This feature was originally published on June 2022. We have bumped it as function of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Dvorak

Don't get looking for "Dvorak" spelled out on the layout like I did - information technology's the proper noun of the guy who patented it in 1936, August Dvorak. He felt that QWERTY was a pain to use and developed his layout to be more efficient.

Studies seem to agree and maybe that's because when using Dvorak, seventy percent of strokes are on domicile row (vs. 32 percentage when using QWERTY.)

When using Dvorak, you'll notice that more than than half of your strokes are with the right paw. Dvorak did this on purpose, based on the fact that well-nigh people are right handed. Interesting annotation (at least to nerdy writers): All the vowels are in home row.

Colemak

Colemak could be considered QWERTY-lite. At that place are only 17 differences in key layout between the ii, plus a second backspace key replacing the Caps Lock key. Colemak is a combination of Coleman (the last proper name of the creator) and Dvorak.

The layout conspicuously isn't just a revamp of Dvorak, though, information technology'south an attempt to fix issues with Dvorak while not intimidating QWERTY users. Looking at the Colemak layout as a QWERTY typist, it's easier to imagine switching over than if you lot were looking at Dvorak.

QWERTZ

Once you lot become down the rabbit pigsty of keyboard layouts, it becomes pretty clear that QWERTY has a strong hold on a lot of the world. For example, QWERTZ is a slight accommodation ordinarily used in central Europe (Deutschland, Austria, the Czechia, and other nearby nations.) The Z and Y keys are switched for two reasons. First, considering Z is used much more Y in German. 2nd, T and Z are used together then much it makes sense for T and Z to be side-by-side. You tin can also notice umlauted vowels (ä, ö, ü) on this layout and there's an Alt Gr key to access a third level of central assignation.

AZERTY

Here'south another example of an about-QWERTY layout. This one is used past most French-speaking countries, though France and Kingdom of belgium each take their ain national variations on the layout, and not anybody likes it. Q swaps with A and W with Z in the elevation row. The semicolon is switched for the M fundamental. If I were to sit downwardly at an AZERTY keyboard, the biggest change would be that the number row function is inverse.

Maltron

Now let's visit a galaxy far, far abroad from QWERTY. The Maltron keyboard looks uh.. unusual, but it's designed with ergonomics in mind – and so information technology might ease your aching hands and sore wrists. The keyboard is separated in chunks, with the numbers in the middle. The left-hand square of letters has ANISF for dwelling row, and the right-hand foursquare's home row is DTHOR. The visitor backside this unusual keyboard, PCD Maltron, started in 1977 equally a response to issues with the QWERTY layout and has constitute some fervent supporters.

JCUKEN

So what almost countries where the alphabet is completely different from the Latin-based English alphabet?

In Russian federation, the Cyrillic alphabet is used, and since 1917 (when Russia reformed its alphabet to remove some messages), JCUKEN (also known every bit YCUKEN, YTsUKEN and JTSUKEN) has served as the default keyboard layout. The regular QWERTY layout is maintained as a secondary office in the same keyboard equally shown on the photo above.

BÉPO

Let's look at some other French keyboard. The BÉPO layout is designed to ease programming and heave efficiency (similar to Dvorak.) This item arrangement is based on statistical written report of the French linguistic communication. People say typing with BÉPO is easier because the keys used nearly often are on the domicile row. BÉPO has a lot of other characters that are missing from the AZERTY layout, including:

  • those of all the official languages ​​of the European Wedlock based on the Latin alphabet;
  • those of Esperanto; Welsh; Turkish and Azerbaijani cluster; the Icelandic; the Greek messages;
  • the figures ¹²³⁴⁵ exhibitors and clues ₆₇₈₉₀;
  • some mathematical symbols, most currency symbols;
  • more than than 500 characters diacritic through a system of twenty dead keys.

Turkish F-Keyboard

Looking up this keyboard layout lead me to the about interesting (and the first) article I've ever read about Turkish typewriters. QWERTY keyboards are very mutual in Turkey, just in 1955, the Turkish F-keyboard was invented to brand typing the local language more efficient.

Think most it this way: "Just look at Scrabble: every language carefully assigns a different value to each letter, and puts a certain number of each tiles in the purse. Playing Scrabble in Romania with English tiles wouldn't make a lot of sense, and yet throughout most of Europe nosotros notwithstanding use typewriters based on how English works."

C'HWERTY - Breton

Let's look at one more keyboard layout for French-speakers, shall we? Information technology'due south in the news because the government is getting some force per unit area to change the long-standing default, AZERTY. This layout came around in 2003 and is a keyboard built for those who speak Breton, a linguistic communication spoken in parts of northwestern French republic. When comparison this layout with AZERTY, the A switches with the Breton alphabetic character C'H (similar in sound to the German 'ch') and Z swaps with W.

The "any layout" keyboard

Is this what the future looks similar? The Optimus Popularis was a ridiculously expensive, vaporware-esque, ultra-customizable keyboard. Who can shell out $1,500 for a keyboard anyhow? Unless you type in multiple languages and regularly utilize unusual characters (calling mathematicians or musicians) it doesn't brand sense. Only it kind of existed, if you lot were ever lucky to see ane.

Other examples of futuristic keyboard implementations include Lenovo'south ThinkPad X1 Fold which uses a full size foldable display that tin act as a keyboard. Razer'due south programmable buttons on their gaming laptops (they dropped the thought) and Apple MacBook's touch bar which utilizes an OLED touchscreen for contextual shortcuts. Power users hate it though, as there's no tactile response. Or how about no keyboard? Speech recognition keeps getting meliorate over fourth dimension thanks to AI.

Some say QWERTY is lagging behind -- and in non-English speaking countries, it's difficult to ignore that QWERTY doesn't brand the near sense -- but most people are too decorated typing on any layout they're comfortable with to carp thinking almost it. Just ask kids doing all the tapping on their flat phones.

Masthead credit: artophe via reddit