Keyboarding it new school…

I’ve taken the plunge and on Thursday switched cold turkey to Colemak, a Dvorak-influenced layout that puts some emphasis on being easier to switch to and saving a few of the ingrained Qwerty shortcuts and punctuation. I’m rather happy with the choice and am slowly regaining speed. I expect to best my previous speeds easily.

As someone that does a lot of typing I’ve long considered using a smarter layout. I’ve been aware of Dvorak since middle school, but never felt like tackling its significant learning curve. I’m hoping the switch will be something of a proactive strike against carpal tunnel/RSI, which I worry about sometimes. I’m also using this as a opportunity to finally rid myself of my touch-typing “left-handed limp”. (My left hand in Qwerty was skewed a key to the left and my right hand “wandered” to make up for it.)

I swear I might have paid more attention to touch-typing in school if the first lessons had used words (Tennessee can be spelled in the two inner fingers of Colemak) instead of gibberish (fkjjkddkk, anyone?).