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From Colemak

Introduction

The QWERTY layout was designed in the 19th century. Colemak is a modern alternative to the QWERTY and Dvorak layouts, designed for efficient and ergonomic touch typing in English.
Learning Colemak is a one-time investment that will allow you to enjoy faster and pain-free typing for the rest of your life. Colemak is now the 3rd most popular keyboard layout for touch typing in English, after QWERTY and Dvorak and comes pre-installed on Mac and Linux systems.

The layout

Colemak3.png

On a US keyboard, keyboards in other regions will vary slightly

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Advantages

  • Ergonomic and comfortable – Your fingers on QWERTY move 2.2x more than on Colemak. QWERTY has 16x more same hand row jumping than Colemak. There are 35x more words you can type using only the home row on Colemak.
  • Easy to learn – Allows easy transition from QWERTY. Only 2 keys move between hands. Many common shortcuts (including Ctrl+Z/X/C/V) remain the same. Typing lessons available.
  • Fast – Most of the typing is done on the strongest and fastest fingers. Low same-finger ratio.
  • Multilingual – Allows to type in over 40 languages and to type various symbols, e.g. "pâté", "mañana", €, em-dash, non-breaking space.
  • Free – Free software released under the public domain. You don't have to buy a new keyboard, just install a program.

Misc


Sign the petition to help get Colemak added as a pre-installed keyboard layout in Windows