A recent Wall Street Journal report delves into Gen Z's surprising lack of keyboard typing skills, featuring interviews with several individuals and revealing some startling statistics.
I don’t know if they do but if they do I doubt they’ve improved. The technique taught by many touch typing courses is a recipe for a wrist injury. It blows my mind that regulatory bodies aren’t calling for keyboard layout reform. The “normal” row stagger keyboard as well as the qwerty layout should be in museums, not on billions of “modern” computers around the world.
Funny enough I use Colemak with my ergonomic (split, columnar stagger) keyboards only, and qwerty on mobile (and on my laptop since it has qwerty keyboard labels).
I recommend, in order of increasing effort:
briefly learn touch typing but then develop your own style with a more relaxed wrist position that de-emphasizes excessive hand movement, uncomfortable movements and crazy pinky stretches
What made you pick Colemak over Dvorak? I am not criticizing your choice, just curious. I chose Dvorak because I found the vowels on the home row cut my hand movement a lot. I fully agree with you on the pinky stretches, that’s my worst movement, which I triage by turning on KDE’s “Caps Lock is another backspace” option.
Dvorak was designed a long time ago for typewriters, i.e. it tries to alternate hand movements, which some people like but many find it makes them slower.
Colemak is meant to be closer to qwerty and was designed for computer keyboards.
Then again I’m sure Dvorak is already miles better than qwerty and the differencesneith Colemak are minor. I think the reason I chose it originally was because of some youtube video but I don’t remember what it was called.
I still want to get a split keyboard at some point and I’d love for it to be columnar stagger. I don’t do too much typing these days, but I’d love to make the typing I do just a bit more enjoyable.
It was a real game changer for me. If you combine it with layers for accessing numbers, arrows, symbols, home/end etc without moving your hand, it makes typing so much comfier and faster
I have some 60% keyboards. The layers make me slow and they’re not very comfortable. But everyone keeps saying they’re amazing, so I’m waiting for it to click.
Tbf most of my layer toggles are happening with a thumb, which isn’t possible on a normal keyboars because they give you a 10x wide key for your most flexible digit, and no other keys in reach.
I recommend a keyboard with at least 3 keys in the thumb cluster. Once you figure out what you like and get used to it, it’s like a superpower
I used to switch back and forth between qwerty and qwertz on two different computers, and the laptop unlock passwords had a z in them. That was tough times.
I don’t know if they do but if they do I doubt they’ve improved. The technique taught by many touch typing courses is a recipe for a wrist injury. It blows my mind that regulatory bodies aren’t calling for keyboard layout reform. The “normal” row stagger keyboard as well as the qwerty layout should be in museums, not on billions of “modern” computers around the world.
As someone who uses colemak only on my phone because I was curious, what kind of layouts and configurateon would you recommend as a new default?
Funny enough I use Colemak with my ergonomic (split, columnar stagger) keyboards only, and qwerty on mobile (and on my laptop since it has qwerty keyboard labels).
I recommend, in order of increasing effort:
What made you pick Colemak over Dvorak? I am not criticizing your choice, just curious. I chose Dvorak because I found the vowels on the home row cut my hand movement a lot. I fully agree with you on the pinky stretches, that’s my worst movement, which I triage by turning on KDE’s “Caps Lock is another backspace” option.
Dvorak was designed a long time ago for typewriters, i.e. it tries to alternate hand movements, which some people like but many find it makes them slower.
Colemak is meant to be closer to qwerty and was designed for computer keyboards.
Then again I’m sure Dvorak is already miles better than qwerty and the differencesneith Colemak are minor. I think the reason I chose it originally was because of some youtube video but I don’t remember what it was called.
Also I really like the Colemal DH mod.
I still want to get a split keyboard at some point and I’d love for it to be columnar stagger. I don’t do too much typing these days, but I’d love to make the typing I do just a bit more enjoyable.
It was a real game changer for me. If you combine it with layers for accessing numbers, arrows, symbols, home/end etc without moving your hand, it makes typing so much comfier and faster
I have some 60% keyboards. The layers make me slow and they’re not very comfortable. But everyone keeps saying they’re amazing, so I’m waiting for it to click.
Tbf most of my layer toggles are happening with a thumb, which isn’t possible on a normal keyboars because they give you a 10x wide key for your most flexible digit, and no other keys in reach.
I recommend a keyboard with at least 3 keys in the thumb cluster. Once you figure out what you like and get used to it, it’s like a superpower
I can actually believe that. Especially in comparison to hunting for th Fn key for all of the layered keys.
qwertz ftw.
*duck and run*
I used to switch back and forth between qwerty and qwertz on two different computers, and the laptop unlock passwords had a z in them. That was tough times.
I like the free stretchies I get from Ctrl+Z on the DE layout.