Layouts / Compare
Dvorak vs QWERTY (US)
Dvorak and QWERTY (US) differ on 31 of their 36 letter and punctuation keys, about 86%. 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 Dvorak and QWERTY (US)?
Of the 36 letter and punctuation keys the two layouts share a position for, 31 produce a different character, so about 86% 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 Dvorak faster than QWERTY (US)?
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 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. For QWERTY (US): None if you already know it. If you're starting from scratch, expect the same weeks-to-months progression as any layout to reach a comfortable working speed.
Which should you choose?
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.
QWERTY (US): Anyone who isn't specifically chasing lower finger travel or fewer awkward stretches, which, realistically, is most people. Learning QWERTY well is almost always more valuable than learning an alternative layout badly.
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
QWERTY (US)
The default layout almost everyone starts on: the baseline every other layout is measured against.
- Universal: every OS, keyboard, and how-to guide assumes it by default
- No relearning cost if you already type on it
- Full ecosystem of muscle-memory-dependent tools (shortcuts, games, typing tests) built around it
- Not designed around English letter frequency, so common letters land on weaker fingers (e.g. the pinky-heavy left hand)
- High rate of same-finger bigrams compared to layouts designed after computers existed
- Left hand does more work than the right despite most people being right-handed