Why is it that the letters of your comp. keyboard have such weird arrangement ?

This design was by Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor, who actually created the typewriter design, and worked with Remington to manufacture it in 1874 for the English language. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY) It is possible to get a different keyboard, with another language's more common letter arrangement added using special function keys in the area of the keyboard called the "home keys." This row is the second row above the space bar. Strangely enough, the name for this arrangement is not using the ASDFGH letters, but the QWERTY letters. The main reason for this design was Sholes' realization that the letters most regularly used in the english language did not follow in alphabetic order, so the typing was quite difficult. There is a different arrangement design by August Dvorak in 1936, who designed his keyboard for efficiency that has a potentially higher speed typing rate than this one, but I have not used one yet. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard) It would be interesting, but for someone who has been using this arrangement for 13 years in professional jobs, it wouldn't be a pleasant experience. There are also keyboards designed for ergonomic function, that have the keys separated into two rows, meeting at a slight angle lower than 45 degrees. I have also not had the opportunity to use one of these. You may also see changes in typing as cellular phones become more heavily used in business. There is also a new computer that is built into a device the size of a pen, can be stood on a desk surface, and projects a keyboard layout using lasers. The person using the computer puts their fingers in the path of the laser, and moves as usual in typing. This creates the same effect as typing on a physical keyboard. The computer has a projector to show a monitor screen, or can be used with a special visor to allow the user private use of the computer. As you can see, things are changing too fast for some of us to keep up. It will still be interesting, though.

My husband told me that there are two arrangements of letters in keyboard, they are QWERTY and DVORAK. Dvorak is a layout invented after QWERTY by Dr. August Dvorak that minimizes finger movement by prioritizing letters that are used more often (like vowels), allowing for greater speed and less chance of carpal tunnel. The Dvorak Keyboard was designed by Drs. August Dvorak and William Dealey in the 1920s and is also called the Simplified Keyboard or American Simplified Keyboard, but is commonly known as the Dvorak keyboard. Dvorak is an alternative to the Qwerty layout. It's designed to cause as little hassle as possible. The most commonly typed keys are placed under the fingers and then this makes it easier to type common combination of letters and words. The Qwerty layout was designed because it makes your typing slower. Back in the 1800's when Christopher Sholes created the Qwerty layout, it solved the problem of the the key bars colliding during typing. If two keys near each other were pressed quickly in succession, the bars they controlled sometimes collided or jammed. So in order to avoid this problem the Qwerty layout was born, in that the most common combination of key presses were harder to type and therefore slower, reducing the chances of the bars colliding or jamming. Source: http://dvorak.i-rox.com/

The qwerty keyboard of computers are designed from the old typewriters. It was designed to be like that so that it will be easier to use for everybody. We used to have the manual typewriter and electric typewriter. Some computers have strange keyboards if they are from other countries like Europe. It doesn't have qwerty keyboard and at first I find it hard to use. My laptop is being given to me by my Belgian bf and its quite strange. It took me a while before getting used to it.

Ohhh really really nice question, well as much as i know, it follows the pattern which the person who made typewriter followed, and the weird arrangement, well it has to do something with qwerty, well i'm not able to recall that precisely it was the name of inventor or something like that. Well, but now if i'm given an typwriter where alphabets are arranged according to the alphabetical order, it'll nut me up, cant get used to of a new pattern now

Hi lotter a very intelligent question ,though i dont knoe the answer ,but i agree with you that it should be in alphabetic order. happy my lottting

I think the letters in a keyboard are arranged in such a fashion that it is easy to type rather than putting it in the alphabetic order. While typing it feels that the sequence of letters which form a word are placed strategically so that in the end it is easy for a person to type the meaningful word correctly. Maybe letters placed side by side can be on an analysis of the probability of occurrence of those two letters together in English literature. To be simple the whole idea only makes sense if the keyboard layout is such that at the end it is fairly easy for a person to type fast.

Never thought of it. But now my fingers are so used to it that a logical keyboard with the alphabets in sequence would create a riot between my own two hands. So do find out the reason and let us all know but dont change the keyboard set up now. I am too old to learn new tricks!

this has been done keeping in mind that very fast typist {the people who actually earn using this keyboard} are at ease of using it as the most frequently used alphabets have been put close to the fingers rest positions so this gives a very fast typing speed you actually feel comfortable because of the same reason. think about it if you had a abcdefg........... keyboard it would have been really hard.to type a simple sentence

I also don't know why it got arranged in such a way but, it seems more comfortable that way than it would ever been if it were alphabetically arranged. Let's see.. if it were alphabetically arranged, I think we'd end up looking at the keyboard too much as to avoid wrong spellings. With the lay out that we have now, we really don't have to look at the keyboard so often since our fingers are more familiar with the letter designation compared to it being alphabetically arranged. Uhm... that's just my guess.. (^_^")

My apologies, I do not have the time to read all of this discussion before responding, but off the top of my head I would think that the keyboard/typewriter was designed so that the letters we use most often are easiest to reach with our fingers. This makes it easier to type and not so hard on the hands.

I believe that the keyboard is arranged so to help us. If you actually noticed. you will mainly use your index, middle and ring finger to type alphabets and your thumbs to hit the space the key and the shifts,tabs,enter and other things are place at the side of the keyboard so your little finger can hit it. All this are arranged so that each and everyone of our fingers have easy access to them. This is why some people can type without looking down on their keyboard, they can memorized where the keys are. Just like text-ting.

I must thank people who designed such keyboard. You can determine it when you are a full touch type typist. You will learn that most of the keys which are being frequently used are in the middle row while letters like b and y are at far side from your fingers. It is desinged in such a way that our finger feel less stressed. Thank you who ever designded this keyboard!

Very good question, I wondered that myself when I was younger, and I still don't really have an answer to that. Heck, I didn't even know normal keyboards were called QWERTY keyboards until a week ago, and I sure didn't know why until a week ago either. Pretty sad for someone who's been using keyboards for a while. I think it's just made mainly for comfort, although if keyboards had started off being arranged in alphabetical order, I'm sure we would all prefer that by now.

Keyboard's are designed in such way to type user friendly. that is the reason keyboard do not contain alphabet's, numeric's and special character's in order. I assume that keyboard's are designed basing on type writer.

Apparently the history of the qwerty keyboard goes back to a pre-electric typewriter design intended to help prevent new typists from causing jams in the mechanical keys of their machines..it then became the accepted standard when manufacturers accepted it. Apparently,one of the Alternatives to qwerty,Dvorzak,is actually available on your computer if you felt you'd like to see what an allegedly faster,more efficient layout was like...An online newsletter Author I read,Randy Cassingham,( of "This is True"!)recommends it..there may be links on how to do it online,as it's apparently possible to remap a standard keyboard under "Settings" for different languages-the Dvorzak remap is on that list of alternatives..you may need to reletter your keyboard's keys for it to work properly..I've never yet been curious enough to physically swap keys around on a keyboard!

From the question, i learned you are a wonderful thinker and a brave question raiser. I have also wondered this question,but wonder just wonder.never raise it out. Maybe it is designed for our most comfortable use, or maybe letters are arranged according to the frequence we use them.

I don't really understand why it is arranged in such a way. But the alphabets are arranged like the typical typewriters and the rest are set in such a way maybe to suit the computer language.

I'm not too sure about it too. My guess is, the keyboard is arranged in such a way that most of the words will not be cramped at the same spot. Each alphabet in a word are distributed to different fingers, so that it will speed up typing.