Friday, July 12, 2002

The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The "qwerty" layout of computer keyboards was first invented for manual typewriters--it helped to keep the keys from jamming. Today, it serves no purpose whatsoever. It's slow, awkward and illogical, and for people who type a lot, it causes repetitive motion injuries. It's also the root cause of a lot of typos. So why are we still using it? Inertia--it's how everybody learned to type, and most people are too lazy (probably me included) to switch to the much more sensible Dvorak keyboard layout (which most computers will easily allow you to do). More information about this is at:

Friends Don't Let Friends Type Qwerty

I'm tempted to switch myself, but hesitant because it supposedly takes about a month to both get used to Dvorak and to get your typing speed back up. After that, though, you can supposedly type much faster. Something to think about . . . .

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