Layouts / latin · ANSI
Workman
A 2010 layout that weighs sideways finger movement as heavily as row travel: not just 'how far,' but 'how awkwardly.'
Is Workman worth learning?
There's no reliable evidence that switching to Workman makes you type faster. The honest reason to learn it is hand comfort, not a speed edge. Typists who've read the ergonomic argument about lateral stretch and want a layout built specifically around minimizing it, rather than defaulting to the more famous Colemak/Dvorak.
How long does Workman take to learn?
Real alternative-layout timelines converge on roughly 8 WPM by day 1, 53 WPM by day 30, and parity with your old speed by around day 90 of consistent daily practice. For Workman specifically: Similar to Dvorak: expect several weeks to a couple of months to reach prior QWERTY speed, since most letters relocate.
History
Released in 2010 by OJ Bucao, Workman started from the observation that most layout designers (including Dvorak) optimized primarily for row travel and alternation, while underweighting how uncomfortable lateral (sideways) finger movement is, particularly for the index fingers reaching to the T/Y columns. Workman rearranges letters to minimize that specific kind of stretch.
Strengths
- Explicitly optimizes for lateral/sideways stretch, not just raw finger-travel distance, a metric many other layouts underweight
- Some independent layout analyzers show it edging out Colemak on total finger-travel distance for English text
- Keeps semicolon on its QWERTY key, unlike Colemak/Dvorak, which some coders find easier on the hands for common syntax
Honest tradeoffs
- Much smaller community than Colemak or Dvorak, so tooling, guides, and OS-level support are thinner
- Its central design claim (lateral movement matters more than raw distance) is Workman's own argument, not an independently settled consensus in the layout community
- Like Dvorak, most letters move relative to QWERTY, so shortcuts and existing muscle memory don't transfer