this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
56 points (93.8% liked)
Technology
66353 readers
4315 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
QWERTY is one of the least efficient keyboard layouts. It was designed to intentionally slow down typing by spacing common letters far apart, to prevent typewriter keys from jamming. It's really not great for modern electronic devices, but it's so widespread that it's very hard to change.
This myth is one of my pet peeves. The rate of typing was not the cause of jamming.
The proximity of sequential typebars was the problem. Two adjacent typebars pressed simultaneously would jam at the very beginning of their stroke. To type adjacent keys, the first key would have to retract completely before the second key could start to be pressed. Otherwise, they struck eachother in flight.
Put 3 or 4 bars between sequential letters, and their "flight" paths only intersect at the very end of their strokes: you can start pressing the second key before the first has even hit the paper, because it will bounce out of the way before the second one gets close. QWERTY enabled good typists to have three or four typebars "in flight" simultaneously, greatly increasing their rate of typing.
QWERTY wasn't designed to slow down typists. It enabled them to type much faster.
Your conclusions are correct, of course: It's not great for modern devices where keystrokes don't interfere with eachother. It's just the oft-repeated "intentionally slow down typists" claim that drives me nuts.
Thanks for the correction! I'm glad to have learnt something new today.
Qwerty wasn't designed to slow people down. when you account for practice time no layout is significantly different in the real world. The limit is how fast you think not how fast your fingers move.