Why can’t we have ABCDE keyboards from now on? Isn’t the reason why the QWERTY keyboard was invented now obsolete?
This is a great question, and I have wondered about this for a while until I dove into the world of alternative keyboard layouts.
If you look at the QWERTY layout, you’ll see that the letters seem to be spread in a… seemingly randomized way. But, if you inspect it more carefully, you will realize that the most common English letters (in order: e,t,a,i,o,n,s) are spread out pretty equally.
There are 2 prevailing theories on why QWERTY was created that way: in order to prevent mechanical jams in typewriters, or to help typists type more efficiently.
- Theory #1: prevent jams: is indeed obsolete.
- Theory #2: help type more efficiently: is practical, but we can do better.
A quick Google search shows that QWERTY was created way back — in 1873. That’s nearly 150 years ago! Suffice to say that it is outdated.
Nowadays with scripts that we can run and AI analysis tools, we can find multiple faults in QWERTY. Although the common letters are spread out, some are in unfavorable positions: e — the most common letter, is placed on the top row. To type it, you have to move your ring finger up. It should be on the home row (the middle row), near a resting position. An alternative is to have it typed by the index, the strongest finger.
Another disadvantage is the imbalance between the hands. Optimally, you would want both hands to get the same amount of work. QWERTY places more common letters on the left hand. By the way, many words require left-hand only. For example: stewardesses, race, wear, etc.
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There are other problems, related to bigrams for example (bigrams are 2-letter series, like al, en, se, ac, etc.), but I won’t get into it to lighten up my answer.
I am realizing that I haven’t attacked the first part of your question yet. While QWERTY has many faults, ABCDE is worse, as many letters are in even more unfavorable positions. Take T for example — second most frequent letter en English — it would be at the position of the Z on QWERTY. Typed by the left pinky, the weakest finger for most people. But even worse: it’s on the bottom row — the hardest place to reach on your keyboard.
This really affects ergonomics and efficiency in a negative way.
I plugged ABCDE layout into an analyser. The biggest problem becomes evident. In ABCDE, the left pinky — the weakest finger for most people, has a whopping 16,43% of the workload. Compare that to QWERTY’s 7,94%.
Now let’s look at the right pinky — the second weakest finger for most people — again, accounting for 7,73% compared to QWERTY’s mere 3,34%.
Okay, I probimised that I wouldn’t talk about bigrams, but allow me to give just one example: TA and AT are common occurrences in English, T and A are respectively the second and third most common letters after all. (Table, attention, create, scratch, etc.). In the ABCDE layout, they both have to be typed my the same left pinky. Even worse: they’re at the farthest possible distance to be typed with one finger. Try typing QZQZQZQZQ in rapid succession. Hard isn’t it? But qz or zq aren’t going to be typed commonly. TA and AT are. That’s how it would feel typing common words in English.
But the idea is good, as many other alternative keyboard layouts put QWERTY to shame: Colemak, Dvorak, mtgap, semimak, etc.
Whether you should get into them is a question for another day, but I firmly believe that from now or, we should teach kids to use more up-to-date layouts.
Edit #1: formatting
Edit #2: added details
Edit #3: added more info on why ABCDE is a bad layout
