Changing from AZERTY to COLEMAK

9 min readDec 30, 2021

*U.S. Patent №207,559. The first appearance of the QWERTY keyboard (1874). Google patents*

Introduction

What is the oldest technology you’ve been using since you have discovered computers?

Over the years, you have changed your operating system, upgraded your good old desktop computer to a fancy smartphone or tablet, removed any cable thanks to the Bluetooth and wifi connections. Internet became omnipresent thanks to the mobile data. Everything has been evolving, except the interface you’re using the most: your keyboard, and more precisely, its layout.

Pandemic has been the opportunity to experiment with new things, like learning piano, reading more or discovering hidden cooking talents. During the successive lock-downs, I decided to drastically change the keyboard layout I had been using for more than 15 years.

One year later, I’d like to present to you my journey from AZERTY to COLEMAK.

QWERTY, a 130 years old layout invented… for Morse Operators

The keyboards are relatively new as a means of input/output data to the computer: they’ve supplanted the pushed cards in 1970. Earlier, we used do use keyboard-powered card push devices that generate pushed cards to interact with systems. The mouse itself, has been introduced in 1983.

But the first typing machines are way older. The first typing machine available on the market was introduced one century earlier, in 1870. The first keyboard looked like a piano where the letters were placed alphabetically.

*Sholes, Glidden & Soule, typewriter prototype, 1868.*

The first qwerty keyboard was patented in 1874. The layout was supposedly invented to slow down typists to avoid the typing mechanism jamming. This theory has been subject to multiple research and is very likely a myth. The first commercial typewriters were intended to telegraph and morse operators. The QWERTY layout was an arrangement between the first main customer at that time (Daniel Hutchins Craig, from American Telegraph Works) and the first manufacturer, Sholes and Densmore.

Did you know why the « i » letter was placed on the top row, near the « 8 » ? To be able to type the year “1870” quicker ; the « i » letter was equally used for the digit « 1 ».

And why is the « Z » placed near « S » and « E »? To save morse operator time : typists would have to type on one letter instead of two (“Z” = “••• •”, “SE” = “••• •”).

There is a fascinating study from Japanese researchers : “On the prehistory of qwerty” that concludes that QWERTY has been invented with no consistent policy, it’s the result of three requirements :

(1) to recieve telegraph operators requirements,
(2) to thrash out a compromise between inventors and producers,
(3) … and to evade old patents.

Alternatives to QWERTY

The first alternatives to QWERTY arrived as soon as 1883, from a competitor type-writer manufacturer. Christopher Sholes, the inventor of QWERTY layout itself, patented its own alternative in 1898, with all the vowels placed on the home row.

*Christopher Sholes’s alternative of QWERTY layout, 15 years later.*

But it was too late, QWERTY continued to be the primary keyboard layout because it was the first one to exist, and the trained people were used to it.
Like the railway track gauges or the VHS tape system, QWERTY took the predominance just because of its early adoption lead. Standards are extremely difficult to change.

One of the most known alternatives was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak, an American professor at Seattle University. In the 1950s, a study group from the US Navy examined the opportunity to migrate from QWERTY to DVORAK but failed to show any benefit compared to trained QWERTY typists. There is yet no evidence that the study was conducted properly.

Some other alternatives continued to pop during the 20th century, with Colemak, Norman, Workman, Halmak, or BÉPO/Néo for non-English options. This is a non exhaustive list. They all claim to be far superior to QWERTY, but never managed to be adopted widely.

Each of these layout came out of a long research and observations, often statistics based. It is difficult to know which would suit you the best. To answer this, you need to ask yourself your use-cases and what type of content you type : it would not make sense to adopt the german-optimized Néo layout if you don’t mainly write German !

Figures never lie: QWERTY cannot be worse

Every inventor claim to have the best keyboard layout, with proper arguments, it is tough to determine who would be right. This is where computers come to the rescue.

Canadian Researcher Martin Krzywinski worked on comparing existing layouts and ended up defining it’s one: Carpalx. His findings are unambiguous, QWERTY is the worse layout you can find, whatever figure compared :

The overall finger distance is required
The usage of the home row compared to top and bottom rows
The left and right hands split
The finger repartition

You can do your own experiments by bringing your own corpus using Patorjk’s keyboard layout analyzer, which will provide you with a detailed analysis of each existing layout for the text you’ve input.

One of the most convincing features is the heatmap. It clearly shows that on QWERTY, the most used keys are spread on multiple places of the keyboard.

Why Colemak?

Although several layouts exist, I had to choose one of them. All of the existing alternatives sound appealing and optimized, so I have created a list of specifications to suit my needs.

I’m an IT engineer, mainly working in English. I need to use all kinds of special characters for programming.

Easy access to all kinds of symbols

Also sometimes I still have to write in French, which includes some accents.

Multilingual by default

I need to work on multiple devices and operating systems, and sometimes I have to use computers that are not mine. So I need a layout available out-of-the-box.

Available by default on multiple operating systems (non-Microsoft operating systems)

My main skills in IT consist of copy/pasting what others are doing, so I wanted to keep easy access to the main keyboard shortcuts working everywhere (ctrl+c/v/x/z) with one single hand.

Easy access to main shortcuts

So my choice came to the Colemak layout, as you can see it as follows.

The layout is available on all my devices without additional configuration, ChromeOS and Android included. All the existing accentuated letters are available through the AltGr key, and any 105 keys keyboard is suitable for Colemak. Colemak is not available by default on Microsoft OSes, it can be easily added if required.

Additionnally, with only 17 (most-used) letters remapped with the Colemak keyboard, the learning curve is easier on Colemak than on other layouts.

My (long) journey to Colemak

Multiple strategies exist to adopt a new layout (example : QWERTY at day, COLEMAK at night), but I decided to go cold turkey and withdraw with the AZERTY everywhere. On my professional laptop, on my mobile phone too. I don’t believe in mild migration as your muscle memory needs to be retrained: repetition of new gestures is the key.

I have never been a very strong typist, and when I quit AZERTY I was typing at approximately 60 words per minute with an accuracy of 85%.

The first two weeks were a total nightmare. I started at approximately 5 words per minute and I had to continuously look at my printed cheatsheet with the Colemak layout. When doing such migration, you need to advise everyone, your colleagues, manager, that your productivity will temporarily decrease. Avoid beginning such transition if you’ve hard deadlines, or if you’re under pressure.

At this point in time, it is critical to retrain your muscle memory and battle against your automatic reflex. Regular practice is the key. I used keybr.com daily for a few weeks. This website first focuses on the most used letters and gradually increases the letters as you go along, mastering other ones.

Here is a summary of my learning curve for the first 6 months. After six months, I felt confident enough to work normally even though I was not to my AZERTY skills.

From day 1 to day 201

Let’s face it, the beginning was very hard. I resumed my learning curve as follows :

0–15 days — Extremely difficult, < 10 wpm

15 days-45 days — Still very slow, but the error rate gently decreases

45 days-90 days — Slow improvement, you can feel the comfort of using a new layout

90–180 days — Your writing speed continue to increase with accuracy improve.

One of the advantages of learning another layout is that you effectively learn to touch type it. I never learned AZERTY at school and used to practice it, still looking at the letters after many years of practice.

One year later

After one year of practice, I have recovered my original speed from AZERTY, but I gained in accuracy. My accuracy is approximately 95% at all times. Gaining access to symbols is much easier in COLEMAK than in AZERTY.

Some features from the Colemak layout are very convenient, like converting the caps lock key to backspace or allowing access to a large set of accentuated letters easily.

After one year, I can confirm some elements :

I don’t type faster than before, but with more accuracy ;
I can really tell that touch type when I use my keyboard ;
I feel much less fatigue at the end of the day: my hands travel much less above my keyboard ;
Typing on the keyboard seems much more natural to me, even when I have to input accentuated letter using Alt Gr key.
Accessing programming symbols (;, []{}(), …) is way more pleasant and straightforward in Colemak than from AZERTY.

Some few downsides to Colemak :

As a big fan of VIM, HJKL mapping is much less obvious ; either you deal with it, either you reconfigure a mapping on your VIM tool ;
On video games, all the existing keyboard shortcuts are made for QWERTY hence it’s preferable to keep the QWERTY for them ;
I’ve lost all my skills about AZERTY and I became very bad at it — but I accept it.

Reverting to normal pace took me approximately one year, and I see this as a long term investment. For other people it could be faster to retrieve their original speed, in my case my muscle memory was very strongly influenced by AZERTY.

Is Colemak (or any QWERTY alternative) a relevant move for me?

On the paper, yes, for sure. However, in your migration effort, you need to consider that changing your keyboard layout is an arduous effort where the gain, at first glance, is not immediately perceptible.

In some cases, abandoning the QWERTY is even advisable :

if you need to use multiple computers where you cannot necessarily change layout settings ;
on your smartphone, because the proximity of main letters confuses the correction algorithms.

However, this change can also be seen as a lifetime reward that could significantly improve your typing experience. This could be a game changer, especially if you work the whole day in front of your computer, whatever your job is in IT or you’re writer.

You can message me a message on linked in if you have questions about my migration to COLEMAK.