At that place'due south no place like home row, am I right? "ASDF" and "JKL:" aren't just the keys our fingers rest upon, they're our friends. Fine, that may be a bit much, but we have all undoubtedly come a long manner from typing our very first letters. In my earliest days of typing, the keyboard setup was confusing and random despite all the fun games on my Typing Instructor CD-ROM.

Eventually, navigating the layout became second nature, and hither I am today, typing at reckless speeds without so much every bit needing to look down. Vii-yr-one-time Devin would be quite impressed. Information technology's probably condom to say that many of the states don't know much about what lies beyond the standard QWERTY keyboard. But there'due south and so much more. So much.

Allow'due south take a look at some popular and regional keyboard layouts. They probably won't have you switching anytime soon, simply it'southward worth a peek. The more you lot know, and all that.

Note: This feature was originally published on June 2016. We have bumped information technology as part of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Dvorak

Don't go looking for "Dvorak" spelled out on the layout like I did - information technology's the proper name of the guy who patented information technology in 1936, Baronial Dvorak. He felt that QWERTY was a pain to apply and developed his layout to be more efficient.

Studies seem to agree and maybe that'south considering when using Dvorak, lxx percent of strokes are on home row (vs. 32 percent when using QWERTY.)

When using Dvorak, yous'll find that more than one-half of your strokes are with the right hand. Dvorak did this on purpose, based on the fact that most people are right handed. Interesting annotation (at least to nerdy writers): All the vowels are in home row.

Colemak

Colemak could be considered QWERTY-lite. In that location are only 17 differences in primal layout between the two, plus a 2d backspace key replacing the Caps Lock fundamental. Colemak is a combination of Coleman (the terminal proper noun of the creator) and Dvorak.

The layout clearly isn't just a revamp of Dvorak, though, it'south an attempt to gear up issues with Dvorak while not intimidating QWERTY users. Looking at the Colemak layout as a QWERTY typist, it's easier to imagine switching over than if you were looking at Dvorak.

QWERTZ

Once yous go downwardly the rabbit hole of keyboard layouts, it becomes pretty clear that QWERTY has a strong hold on a lot of the world. For example, QWERTZ is a slight adaptation commonly used in fundamental Europe (Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and other nearby nations.) The Z and Y keys are switched for 2 reasons. Offset, because Z is used much more than Y in German. 2d, T and Z are used together so much information technology makes sense for T and Z to be side-past-side. You lot tin can also observe umlauted vowels (ä, ö, ü) on this layout and at that place'southward an Alt Gr key to access a third level of fundamental assignation.

AZERTY

Here's another example of an about-QWERTY layout. This one is used by most French-speaking countries, though France and Belgium each have their own national variations on the layout, and not everyone likes it. Q swaps with A and Westward with Z in the height row. The semicolon is switched for the Grand key. If I were to sit down at an AZERTY keyboard, the biggest change would be that the number row role is changed.

Maltron

Now permit's visit a galaxy far, far abroad from QWERTY. The Maltron keyboard looks uh.. unusual, simply it's designed with ergonomics in mind – so it might ease your agonized hands and sore wrists. The keyboard is separated in chunks, with the numbers in the center. The left-hand square of letters has ANISF for abode row, and the right-paw square's home row is DTHOR. The company backside this unusual keyboard, PCD Maltron, started in 1977 equally a response to issues with the QWERTY layout and has found some fervent supporters.

JCUKEN

So what about countries where the alphabet is completely different from the Latin-based English alphabet?

In Russia, the Cyrillic alphabet is used, and since 1917 (when Russia reformed its alphabet to remove some messages), JCUKEN (besides known as YCUKEN, YTsUKEN and JTSUKEN) has served as the default keyboard layout. The regular QWERTY layout is maintained as a secondary function in the same keyboard as shown on the photo above.

BÉPO

Let's look at another French keyboard. The BÉPO layout is designed to ease programming and boost efficiency (like to Dvorak.) This detail arrangement is based on statistical report of the French linguistic communication. People say typing with BÉPO is easier because the keys used nearly oft are on the habitation row. BÉPO has a lot of other characters that are missing from the AZERTY layout, including:

  • those of all the official languages ​​of the European Wedlock based on the Latin alphabet;
  • those of Esperanto; Welsh; Turkish and Azerbaijani; the Icelandic; the Greek letters;
  • the figures ¹²³⁴⁵ exhibitors and clues ₆₇₈₉₀;
  • some mathematical symbols, most currency symbols;
  • more than than 500 characters diacritic through a arrangement of twenty dead keys.

Turkish F-Keyboard

Looking upwardly this keyboard layout pb me to the most interesting (and the first) article I've ever read about Turkish typewriters. QWERTY keyboards are very common in Turkey, but in 1955, the Turkish F-keyboard was invented to make typing the local language more than efficient.

Think most information technology this manner: "Just look at Scrabble: every language carefully assigns a different value to each letter, and puts a sure number of each tiles in the purse. Playing Scrabble in Romania with English language tiles wouldn't make a lot of sense, and all the same throughout most of Europe nosotros withal use typewriters based on how English works."

C'HWERTY - Breton

Let'due south look at i more than keyboard layout for French-speakers, shall we? It's in the news considering the government is getting some pressure to alter the long-continuing default, AZERTY. This layout came around in 2003 and is a keyboard built for those who speak Breton, a language spoken in parts of northwestern France. When comparing this layout with AZERTY, the A switches with the Breton letter C'H (similar in sound to the German 'ch') and Z swaps with Due west.

The "whatever layout" keyboard

Is this what the futurity looks like? The Optimus Popularis was a ridiculously expensive, vaporware-esque, ultra-customizable keyboard. Who tin shell out $1,500 for a keyboard anyway? Unless y'all type in multiple languages and regularly use unusual characters (calling mathematicians or musicians) information technology doesn't make sense. But it kind of existed, if yous were ever lucky to meet 1.

Other examples of futuristic keyboard implementations include Lenovo'southward ThinkPad X1 Fold which uses a full size foldable display that can act as a keyboard. Razer'southward programmable buttons on their gaming laptops (they dropped the idea) and Apple MacBook's impact bar which utilizes an OLED touchscreen for contextual shortcuts. Power users hate it though, as there'southward no tactile response. Or how nigh no keyboard? Voice communication recognition keeps getting improve over time thanks to AI.

Some say QWERTY is lagging behind -- and in non-English language speaking countries, information technology's difficult to ignore that QWERTY doesn't brand the most sense -- but most people are likewise busy typing on whatsoever layout they're comfy with to bother thinking about information technology. Just ask kids doing all the tapping on their flat phones.

Masthead credit: artophe via reddit