Dvorak and Colemak Compared With QWERTY
Colemak changes 17 keys from QWERTY, Dvorak rearranges nearly all. Home row contents, relearning cost, and when neither layout is worth it.
Read the articleBlog
Articles about the texts in the library, the people who wrote them, and the keyboards you type them on.
Keyboard layouts
QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, Dvorak, Colemak and the Polish programmer layout, key by key.
How to Change and Check the Keyboard Layout in Windows
Two shortcuts change the layout in Windows, and one fires by accident. How to add, remove and confirm a layout before blaming the hardware.
Read the articleISO vs ANSI Keyboard Layout Differences Explained
Enter shape, left Shift width, one extra key and the backslash position: 105 keys against 104, and what that costs at the keycap shop.
Read the articleWhy the QWERTY Layout Exists, and Why It Stayed
QWERTY reached its modern letter order in an 1878 patent. Typebar jams, telegraph operators, and why ISO/IEC 9995 standardises positions only.
Read the articleAccents and dead keys
Dead keys, AltGr and the layouts that make accented letters possible.
Dead Keys Explained, and Why They Look Broken
A dead key prints nothing until the next keystroke arrives, which is why a working key can look faulty in a keyboard test.
Read the articleThe US International Layout, and Its Five Dead Keys
US International trades five punctuation marks for accents. The dead key pairs, the space bar escape, and when plain US is better.
Read the articleLearning to touch type
Finger placement, a plan that fits a month, and the habits that quietly slow you down.
Home Row Finger Placement, Key by Key
The complete finger map for the home row and the rows above and below, why F and J carry bumps, and the posture faults that cost accuracy.
Read the articleHow to Learn Touch Typing Without Bad Habits
Home row coordinates, one finger per key, accuracy above 97 percent first, and the 30, 50 and 80 WPM reference points.
Read the articleLearn to Type in 30 Days, Fifteen Minutes at a Time
A four week plan with a daily length, a weekly focus and an accuracy threshold for moving on, honest about the slower first week.
Read the articleSeven Typing Habits That Quietly Cost You Speed
Seven habits that hold typing back: looking down, outrunning your accuracy, backspace overuse, one sided Shift and a chair set too high.
Read the articleSpeed, measured calmly
What WPM, CPM and KPH actually count, and why two tests report different numbers.
Average Typing Speed, and What the Number Is For
Convert the typing figures employers actually publish, separate a 15 second burst from a 60 second pace, and see what accuracy does to the total.
Read the articleCPM and KPH, and How They Relate to WPM
CPM is WPM times five, KPH is CPM times sixty. Which industries use which unit, and the four things that quietly break a comparison.
Read the articleHow a Typing Speed Test Actually Measures You
What starts the clock, what backspace really does, how raw and corrected WPM differ, and why one passage gives two different results.
Read the articleWhat WPM Means, and Why Two Tests Disagree
A word in a typing test means five characters including the space, which is why WPM measures keystrokes rather than vocabulary.
Read the articleWork and exams
Data entry, the numeric keypad, certificates and what employers actually check.
The Data Entry Test, and What It Actually Scores
Alphanumeric speed, numeric keypad speed and accuracy are three separate scores in a data entry test, and each one is trained differently.
Read the articleThe Ten Key Test, and How Keypad Speed Is Counted
The keypad reverses the telephone dial, marks 5 with a raised bump and reports speed in KPH. How the block is fingered and checked.
Read the articleThe Typing Test in a Job Application
How a recruitment typing test runs, whether corrections are allowed, and how to read a WPM threshold written in a job advert.
Read the articleTyping Certificates, and What They Are Worth
A typing certificate states WPM and accuracy from a single session. What supervision changes, and why most employers retest anyway.
Read the articleCode and symbols
Brackets, braces and the reach that makes code slower than prose on every layout.
Typing Brackets and Symbols on Any Layout
Where braces, brackets, backslash, pipe and tilde sit on US ANSI, German T1 and French AZERTY, and why AltGr carries most of them.
Read the articleTyping Practice for Coding, and Why the Number Drops
Code is dense in shifted characters, has no word shapes to anticipate and is edited by autocomplete, so prose WPM does not transfer.
Read the articleKeyboard hardware
Ghosting, N-key rollover, chatter and cleaning, all tested in the browser.
Ghosting, N-Key Rollover, Chatter and Double Presses
Ghosting, key blocking, the 6 key USB limit, chatter and double presses are four separate problems. How each one looks and how to check it.
Read the articleHow to Clean a Keyboard Without Damaging It
Compressed air, keycap removal, isopropyl alcohol at 70 to 99 percent and spill recovery, in the order that keeps the board alive.
Read the articleWhat an Online Switch Tester Can and Cannot Measure
Registration, repeats and event timing are measurable in a browser. Actuation force, travel distance and sound are not, whatever a page claims.
Read the articleChildren and school
When small hands are ready, how long a session should last, and what progress looks like.
Typing for Kids: Reach First, Speed Much Later
A reach test rather than a birthday decides when a child can start touch typing, and the first month is about placement rather than speed.
Read the articleTools
Keyboard test
Press a key and watch it light up. It shows keys that stay silent, keys that fire twice, and how many keys your board reads at once.
Check your keyboardTyping test
A hundred short texts, from Aesop to the US Constitution. You get speed, accuracy and a map of the keys you keep missing.
Measure your speed