QWERTY layout map
Click any letter to trace where it sits vs. QWERTY. Numbers follow the number row; shading = English letter frequency.
moved from QWERTY
most frequent letters
mid frequency
QWERTY at a glance
Home-row letters–
Letters moved vs QWERTY–
Fingering (home row)–
All four layouts, head to head
Computed from real English letter-frequency data. Lower is better for travel & same-hand; higher is better for home-row density.
| Metric | QWERTY | Dvorak | Colemak | Workman |
|---|
Finger load
How the 26 letters distribute across your ten fingers in the active layout.
The "HE" problem
English's most common letter pairs, and whether your two fingers roll naturally, hit the same finger, or alternate hands.
The short story behind each layout, in the words of the people who designed them.
QWERTY · c. 1873
Descended from Christopher Sholes' early typewriters. The popular legend says it spaced common letter pairs to prevent typebars jamming; modern research (the Yasuoka & Yasuoka papers) suggests it partly transcribed American Morse code. Either way, it optimized for a machine that no longer exists — yet still rules the world.
Dvorak · 1936
August Dvorak & William Dealey's patented "simplified keyboard." Put ~70% of English typing on the home row, vowels in one hand and consonants in the other to force alternation. Out-of-the-box on most OSes.
Colemak · 2006
Shai Coleman started from QWERTY and famously moved just 17 letters, favoring comfortable "inward rolls" (the -tion, -art, -yng rolls) and keeping the ZXCV shortcuts intact. The community favorite for an easy QWERTY transition.
Workman · 2010
OJ Bucao's response to Colemak's awkward "HE" sideways twist. Workman avoids the center columns and leans on the strong middle fingers. A niche layout with a devoted following — and, by design, more same-finger bigrams.