In April 2024, I decided to learn a new keyboard layout. I was not satisfied with QWERTY, which was originally designed for typewriters. I believed that there was a better layout for modern keyboards, which do not have to consider adjacent keys jamming, and thought it would be interesting if I could learn 2 keyboard layouts.
After, a search, I settled on the Colemak keyboard layout, and then the Colemak Mod DH layout. Colemak offered the benefit of placing the most commonly used letters on the easiest to reach keys, as well separating common bigrams (sequences of two letters) across different fingers. Mod DH took this a step further by placing ‘D’ and ‘H’ onto more comfortable positions compared to the original Colemak layout (changing a lateral movement of the index finger into a vertical). The layout also does not strongly modify the positions of “ZXCV” or the semicolon unlike another popular optimized layout Dvorak, making it better for programmers. Therefore, this was the layout I chose to learn.
I started learning the layout using Monkeytype. For those that do not know, Monkeytype is a minimalistic website to practice typing. One of the best things about it is its customizability - there is an option to use an emulated Colemak layout, as well as display the virtual keyboard on your screen. This made it an ideal website to learn typing.
I started out doing a lot of 10 word only tests when I still had not memorized the layout. Learning the layout when you do not have the mental positions of the keys memorized in your head is very grueling, so doing only 10 word tests made that easier. I did 10 word tests until I memorized the layout well enough to not register AFK time on Monkeytype, which was around when I was 35 wpm.
After this, I switched to doing 50 or 100 word tests. My speed was gradually improving, at a linear rate, until 62 wpm. At this point I started introducing numbers, which dipped my rate of improvement significanty. Even on QWERTY, I never learned an organized finger assignment to press the number keys, and that was something I wanted to learn properly this time around with a new keyboard layout.
Right now, I am still practicing and learning the keyboard layout. You can view my progress by clicking the Monkeytype icon under my Profiles, which shows my top speeds for 15, 30, 60, and 120 seconds time, as well as 10, 25, 50, and 100 word tests.
On QWERTY, I was able to type 114 wpm. They say that a person should be able to reach their old speeds on a new keyboard layout, so I will be slowly trying to improve my speed to reach that target.
One of the most interesting things that I want to mention in particular is that a person must continue to practice all keyboard layouts they know in order to retain muscle memory. I saw this mentioned on the Colemak website when I was first looking into it, and now after I have tried learning a new keyboard layout, I can definitely confirm this. A lot of typing, and in particular touch typing, is about muscle memory. When considering learning a new keyboard layout, make sure you understand that it takes a lot of effort to maintain that versatility!