Fast Typing Without RSI

By Gaz under Personal Growth, Programming

At the impressionable age of 14, I still remember being laughed at by teachers and classmates alike when I selected my exam options, because I had elected to take ‘Shorthand & Typing‘. Unfortunately, I never was allowed to attend that class, because it was “for girls“. I spent the next 10 years picking up the usual bad typing habits of self taught programmers: I looked at the keyboard instead of the screen; I didn’t work to any particular system, but just hovered both hands over the keyboard using two or three fingers from each hand to hunt-and-peck my way through whatever I was typing; I often had to go back and correct mistakes at the beginning of the line when the cursor was halfway across the screen.

By the time I was in my mid-20’s I could sustain around 50 or 60 words-per-minute by watching my fingers, and then go back and correct all the typos later. Most of my typing was still programming though, so that was more than ample as I spent much more time figuring out what to type than actually typing. However, I soon landed my first technical writing position, began writing my first book (horribly out of date by now, but still available for free online at sources.redhat.com), and started to realise the limitations of the awful typing habits I’d been reinforcing through practice for all those years. I made several failed attempts at learning to touch-type on a QWERTY keyboard, but it just seemed too difficult to unlearn everything I had being doing since I got my first computer in 1981.

I even flirted with the Dvorak keyboard layout briefly after completing my book in 2000, steadfastly popping all the keycaps off my spare keyboard and rearranging them. The principle seemed like such a good idea, with vowels on the weaker left hand and consonants on the right, much of English would involve alternating between a finger on the left hand and a finger on the right. Looking back, I can see that the mistake I made was rearranging the keycaps (aside from the fact the different shaped keys made the keyboard uncomfortably bumpy with half the keys in the wrong row) because I was so used to watching my fingers.

In 2002 I had several weeks of technical writing ahead of me with little programming work, so I determined to bite the bullet and stick to the Dvorak layout throughout, and decide whether to stick with it or give up entirely at the end. I’d read articles from many people who said it had taken them a week or two to recover about 80% of their QWERTY typing speed, and about a month to get back to their former 100wpm flurries. Well, I had been stuck at 50ish words per minute for so long that this sounded like an impossible dream. I made the wallpaper of my computer a tiled image of the Dvorak key positions, and spent half a day working through an online Dvorak typing course to try to get used to keeping my wrists pressed down, and always using the same finger for the same key. The exercises went well, and leaving the keycaps in their QWERTY positions meant that every time I looked at the keyboard I confused myself and made more mistakes than looking at the screen with an occasional glance at my new Dvorak wallpaper to remind me which finger to use.

The first few days were absolutely awful, and I was sorely tempted to switch back to QWERTY for just a minute to do any typing other than the technical papers I was working on. Sure enough by the end of the week I was back to about 40wpm, but crucially I was almost 100% accurate, and could always see and correct mistakes within 2 or 3 keypresses so I had no tedious correction post-typing phase to go through at all. By the time I’d finished the articles (a week ahead of schedule), I was completely sold. Going back to programming was mildly annoying, because UNIX likes to shorten all of the command words by missing out lots of vowels, so my left hand would sit idle a lot of the time while I typed everything frantically with my overworked right hand, but I got used to that too within a few days.

I’ve been using Dvorak almost exclusively for about 5 years now, and (often after enjoying the confused expression on their face if they’ve watched me type for a few minutes, or watched their fingers type something at my keyboard before looking up to see gibberish on the screen) strongly recommend it to anyone who will listen to me. From my perspective it isn’t really about the speed, especially because half of my typing is in a programming language rather than English, but about setting aside the fears I had of developing RSI. I am certainly more comfortable typing for 8 or more hours at a stretch than I ever was before, and I’m much happier with finally having developed the ability to touch type… I can look at a document I’m transcribing parts of (or even hold a conversation at times) and let my fingers type without having to pay attention to them.

If you recognise any of yourself in this story, I highly recommend spending just 5 days when you have no pressing deadlines forcing yourself to work with the Dvorak layout. Start with this online course and resist the temptation to go back until the 5 days are up. All modern operating systems have a Dvorak layout built in to the keyboard preferences so there’s no nasty hackery involved in switching over these days, try it and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

What if I have to go back to QWERTY temporarily?

I occasionally need to drive someone elses keyboard for a few minutes, and used to switch over to Dvorak in their preferences before I felt like I could cope. More recently, I think that it’s not going back to QWERTY that is uncomfortable in itself, but going back to having to watch my fingers when I type is what drives me nuts. Plenty of people report being able to switch back and forth without difficulty after spending a few months learning to use Dvorak to the best of their ability, but my guess is that those folks were probably already touch typing in QWERTY. I don’t think my QWERTY skills have gotten any worse in the years I’ve devoted to Dvorak, I think they just feel substandard compared to how comfortably I can touch-type with Dvorak nowadays. Your mileage may vary.

What is your experience with Dvorak?