Episode: 4143
Title: HPR4143: Learning to touch-type using the Dvorak keyboard layout
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4143/hpr4143.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:11:50

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4143 for Wednesday the 19th of June 2024.
Today's show is entitled Learning to Touch Type Using the Dwarwick Keyboard Layout.
It is hosted by Ennis Tello and is about nine minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is why I chose Dwarwick and some tools I found useful.
Hello there, welcome to Hacker Public Radio, I'm Ennis Tello.
If you've ever thought about recording a podcast, the people at Hacker Public Radio would love to
take you up on it. It's a lot easier than you think and there are plenty of guides online
as to how to do it. In today's episode I want to talk about touch typing.
I've been learning to touch type over the last three months or so and I thought I'd share
some of my experiences and top tips for anyone who either wants to learn to touch type
or wants to speed up their typing. Now I've been typing for 40 odd years,
initially of course on a mechanical typewriter, then on to various electric type writers
and finally on to computers and I've always used the old method of hunt and peck which just
basically means look down at the keyboard and press the letters that you want and I've always
done that and I did a typing test on my speed using that method and found that I could usually
manage about 40 words a minute but given that I laughingly call myself a writer of some description
at least I write stuff for a living, I thought it was about time I learned to do this typing thing
properly for once and for all. Now the first problem I encountered was that part of my natural
muscle memory was looking down at the keyboard and so when I went through various typing tutors
trying to learn the quirky layout I found it very difficult and of course whenever there was
any situation in which I felt under pressure and I had to type quickly or just wanted to
bash out a response to an email or what have you. I'd look down and I found that very difficult
habit to break and my goal is to get to around 90 words a minute from my 40 so what I decided to do
was I was going to learn a different keyboard layout so I have been learning the Dvořák
keyboard layout and the reason for that is because if I'm in front of a keyboard touch typing
and the computer is set to accept the Dvořák keyboard even though I haven't changed my keycaps
around I'm still typing away on a quirky keyboard, a physical quirky keyboard. When I look down
there's no sort of handy label on the keys to tell me where to stab my stubby little fingers.
So what is the Dvořák keyboard? Well it was invented or developed by August Dvořák in 1936
and it was designed to ensure that typists had fewer finger movements when they were typing
than a traditional quirky layout. On the home row for instance the left hand's four fingers
cover the vowels left to right AOEU and the right hand's home row covers the most common
consonants which are SNT and H and other common key presses like P and C for instance are as close
as possible to the easy fingers which are your first finger and your little finger or pinky.
It's often said that the best typists in the world use the Dvořák keyboard because
you know it's in this way more efficient but I've not found any evidence one way or another
and it's largely contested. The key obviously to anything and the key to touch typing seems to be
practice learning to use the tools properly rather than thinking that the tools as are themselves
will produce results you know like buy a set of 10 grand golf clubs by paying or someone
and you'll play golf like Tiger Woods. Well you know you can invest in a Dvořák keyboard or a
fancy high-end mechanical keyboard and all of a sudden you'll be able to type faster while that's
not necessarily true. The thing I found was that just practicing is what sped me up and it doesn't
really matter what keyboard you're tapping away at. Now some sites that I went to
typing.com was the first site that got me going right at the top of .go results obviously
typing.com it's designed quite nicely it's highly congratulatory shall we say it's built
from what I can tell with school kids in mind you know there's lots of mention of classrooms and
a bunch of stars and anthropomorphic smiling computers and lots of use of the word awesome.
That might be your bag of course you can use a free account or you can throw them I think about
$10 or so for a paid-for account. Now the next site I tried was keyboard.com which is k-e-y-b-r.com
which is great definitely the best website I found. You can put into it as you can with typing.com
actually the fact that you're using coalmack or Dvořák or Quirty or Japanese keyboard.
Keyber.com starts you off with just a few keys and then when you're up to a certain
level of speed and accuracy it adds the next key into the mix so for instance it might start you
off with A, E, T and N and throw lots of words at you just using those letters then when you're
accurate enough and fast enough it'll add an extra key like S or U. Now the great thing about
keyboard.com is that it learns what combinations you're struggling with and what keys that it takes
you slightly longer to find than others and then tunes the drills that it throws at you
to concentrate on those weak points so it's quite focused and there are some really nice stats
pages too that the site offers you plus you can do a full on typing test you can compete against
others online. It's an incredibly multilingual site I think there are about 30 localisations
and I stumped up I think it was eight pounds ten dollars what have you to buy an account for that
particular site. In my various bits and pieces of research I also found a list of sites and
pieces of software that you can use to help improve your typing and I'll include that link in
the show notes some of them are a bit out of date I think I'm one of the sites that the listing
comprises of shareware and freeware which shows you quite how old the site might be.
Being an open source first type of chat I thought I'd look at open source software
one bit of software that I really like is called TYPE T-O-I-P-E and it's described as yet
another typing test but crab flavoured which it certainly is actually it works on Mac and Linux
and WSL in Windows it's written in Rust and licensed under MIT by default it uses the word
list which is built into the OS at least on Linux for its random words and it gives you speed
accuracy stats punctuation is optional which is handy and one of the options I found really handy
was that you can give TYPE your own word list so if there are letters which you find very troublesome
you can practice them separately and to create a list of words I went to another great site which
is called ingas anagram generator again links and show notes ingas anagram generator will create
a list of unique words from letters that you put in so your problem letters and then you can
create a word list from that and then point TYPE at that word list and do some extra practice
now like anything else typing speed improves with practice and I try and do an hours practice each day
as much as possible and I use the devorja keyboard now for every day work on my computers and to
give you an idea of time scale I started this project in March this year and as of now which is
beginning of June I can touch TYPE at about 40 to 50 words a minute so I'm already up to the
speed of my old hunting peck on a Quirty keyboard so I hope you found this podcast useful to you if
you're trying to learn to touch type or trying to speed up your typing have a look at the links
and happy practicing okay I think that's about all for today this is Anastelo signing off on Hacker
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