Layouts / Compare
Colemak vs Dvorak
Colemak and Dvorak differ on 30 of their 36 letter and punctuation keys, about 83%. Neither has reliable evidence of being faster to type on: the honest reason to prefer one is hand comfort and shortcut habits, not speed. The real cost of switching is the few weeks spent below your old pace.
How different are Colemak and Dvorak?
Of the 36 letter and punctuation keys the two layouts share a position for, 30 produce a different character, so about 83% of the typing keys move. The number and modifier keys stay put. Here is the home row, the row your fingers rest on, in each:
Is Colemak faster than Dvorak?
There is no solid evidence that either layout makes you type faster. Controlled comparisons find that practice volume dwarfs layout choice, and the fastest typists in the CHI 2018 study of 136 million keystrokes (Dhakal et al.) win on rollover and rhythm, not on which layout they use. Optimized layouts do measurably cut finger travel and same-finger bigrams, which is a comfort and effort argument, not a speed promise.
How long does switching take?
Real alternative-layout timelines converge on roughly 8 WPM on day 1, about 53 WPM by day 30, and parity with your old speed near day 90 of consistent daily practice. For Colemak: Most people report 2–4 weeks of regular practice to match their old QWERTY speed, with real comfort gains showing up well before that. For Dvorak: Long: most people report 1–3 months to reach their old QWERTY speed, since essentially the whole keyboard is new. Expect a real productivity dip during the first few weeks.
Which should you choose?
Colemak: QWERTY typists who want a meaningfully lower-effort layout without a full from-scratch relearn, and who don't want to give up their editor/OS shortcut muscle memory.
Dvorak: Typists willing to fully relearn touch typing from zero in exchange for a home-row-centric layout, and who don't mind remapping editor shortcuts.
Colemak
A 2006 QWERTY alternative that keeps Ctrl+Z/X/C/V in place while moving the rest onto stronger fingers.
- Roughly halves finger travel distance versus QWERTY by independent analyses, and cuts same-finger bigrams from the thousands to the low hundreds per typical novel-length text
- Z/X/C/V stay put, so undo/cut/copy/paste shortcuts keep working without remapping
- One of the most widely supported alternative layouts, built into most operating systems and every mechanical-keyboard firmware
- Still an angle-mod-free, straight ANSI layout, so the pinky and ring fingers on the outer columns do more reaching than a split/ergo-first design would ask for
- Smaller community and software support than QWERTY, obviously: some games and remote-desktop tools assume QWERTY key positions for shortcuts
- The claimed finger-travel and speed gains are real in aggregate but layout choice matters far less than practice volume for most typists
Dvorak
Patented in 1936 to put the most common English letters on the home row under your strongest fingers.
- Home row alone covers a large fraction of common English letters, so a lot of typing never leaves it
- Reduces finger travel and same-hand alternation compared to QWERTY in most analyses
- Nearly a century of use and native OS support, the most "battle-tested" alternative layout that exists
- The original speed-superiority claims are not well supported by controlled research, despite being widely repeated
- Almost every letter moves, unlike Colemak, so keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+Z/X/C/V) land on different keys and either need remapping or relearning
- Smallest software/gaming ecosystem assumption of any layout here: some tools hard-code QWERTY key positions