It’s been quite sometime that I have been fiddling with the idea of learning Dvorak. When I learned typewriting and touch typing in school, QWERTY was the only one in use. This month I have started learning Dvorak and I’m looking forward to destroy/enhance my muscle memory.
Ms Celia and her typewriting sessions
I learned typewriting in primary school. When we were on years 5 and 6, “the seniors” had the benefit of choosing an extra class every 6 months. The school principal tried to offer as many options as possible to keep us entertained, so they offered sewing, embossing, sports, painting, chess, typewriting and informatics.
My first selection was typewriting, and despite what anyone would think, it was quite a popular option among my classmates. It was also sort of nice because we could interact with people from year 6 or people from the same year that had a different teacher. This was back in the early 2000’s and typewriters were still common. I remember the typewriting teacher - Ms Celia. She was a living stereotype, bless her 😅. She loved when everyone was typing using proper posture, avoiding “kores” strips (aka, tippex correction paper) and, of course, not even peeking at the keyboard. Eyes fixed on the piece of paper. She taught us how to typewrite and touch type using our 10 fingers by using several methods of persuasion. The failed assignment discussion: 5 typos. That’s a 5/10 on the assignment, or the typical typo counter: You made 7 typos. Redo it, among many other exemplary scolding 😁.
However, later on I discovered that Ms Celia only taught us touch typing on a QWERTY layout. I never heard about Dvorak until I was 16. The name fascinated me from the beginning but I never figured out how I could learn that mystical layout on my dependable cheap compaq qwerty keyboard, let alone on my typewriter! I was still a student without a proper source of income, so I didn’t even think about buying a Dvorak keyboard. To be fair with Ms Celia, QWERTY has been and will still be the leading layout. Dvorak is also optimized for English, such that it would require the typist less finger motion. Thus, less wrists or finger injuries. At least, this is what many proponents claim. I was taught in Spanish, so it is understandable that Ms Celia would have never mentioned this layout in our long typewriting sessions.
Why Dvorak?
Why am I doing this to myself? Two main driving forces:
- My curiosity
- My wrist pain. Despite I have an ergonomic keyboard - Microsoft Comfort Curve 3000 - which has been quite dependable over the years. Yet, I want to try a different approach to avoid wrist pain. Instead of changing hardware, I truly want to give my fingers a rest when typing.
So far, the learning curve has been steep, slow and even painful at times. Learning Dvorak feels like I’m being introduced to a whole new world. I am once again positioning my fingers on the home row. Back at doing exercises with weird words that don’t make any sense most of the times. But they do have a purpose! To develop muscle memory.
These are the resources I’m using:
- Dvorak keyboard training - Currently on level 1
- DitchQwerty
It took me 6 months to learn Qwerty by spending one hour per day, 5 days a week using an old-fashioned typewriter. It took me about a year or two to actually become faster. I wonder how long it will take me to learn Dvorak. One more mission to go through this year. Practice makes perfect. À votre santé, Ms Celia.