In January of 2022 I first switched from QWERTY keyboard layout to Colemak, because it seemed like a fun challenge. Before switching, I recall averaging about 30 words per minute on QWERTY. I had never practiced speedtyping before. One month after switching layouts, I had surpassed 30 words per minute over a 60 second typing speed test on monkeytype. After two months I had reached over 60 words per minute.
After discovering an online niche of alternative keyboard layouts I decided to try a few more and I eventually reached over 120 words per minute, quadrupling my original speed. I attributed this mainly to the simple fact that being interested in keyboard layouts & typing speed caused me to intentionally practice typing, which caused my speed to increase. Many of those speedtypists who I interacted with online shared the opinion that alternative keyboard layouts do not inherently make you faster at typing. At one point someone asked me whether I have any proof of this claim, and this made me curious, so I decided to do some informal research on the topic.
I collected some basic data about the prevalence of alternative keyboard layout usage amongst a relatively broad subset of the speedtyping community by using the #self-role-assignment channel in the monkeytype Discord server. I discovered that 20534 users had self-assigned a role for what I'll call a "standard" keyboard layout, including QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ, and other international variants of QWERTY. In the same channel, 3013 users had self-assigned a role for what I'm calling an "alternative" layout, including Dvorak, Colemak, Colemak-DH, Semimak, etc.
I also collected some data manually by scouring the public leaderboards on the monkeytype website, focusing only on users who had achieved a personal fastest speed in a 60 second test on the default English dictionary of 200 words per minute or more. Take note that the default English dictionary (simply called English)on monkeytype only contains 200 of the "most common" English words. I used the username & bio of these users from their public monkeytype profiles to find their Discord accounts, YouTube channels, and accounts on other websites in an attempt to determine what type of keyboard layout they were using. If they used more than one I tried to discover which one was the main layout used for the 200 words per minute speedtyping. Out of these 79 users, I discovered that 37 of them used a standard keyboard layout, & that 14 of them used an alternative keyboard layout. The other 28 were unknown.
Using this data, we can say with some level of certainty that, out of the broad subset of speedtypists, 12.80% of them use an alternative keyboard layout. Out of the group of users who had achieved a personal best of more than 200 words per minute, if we assume that the 28 unknown users were probably using a standard keyboard layout, then we can say that ~17–18% of them used an alternative keyboard layout. According to the data in Table I, this means that speedtypists who have achieved over 200 words per minute were ~38–39% more likely to use an alternative keyboard layout.
| monkeytype self role assignment | ≥200wpm English 60s leaderboard | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Layout Users | 20534 | 65 |
| Alternative Layout Users | 3013 | 14 |
| Total | 23547 | 79 |
| Proportion of Alternative Layout Users | 12.7956852252941% | 17.7215189873418% |
It could be argued that with such informal data from the monkeytype Discord server role assignment channel, it's likely that up to 5% of standard layout users clicked an alternative layout by accident. Based off the data in Table II, this means that speedtypists who have achieved over 200 words per minute were up to 110% more likely (17.7215189873418% ÷ 8.4354694865588% − 100%) to use an alternative keyboard layout. This seems a little bit far-fetched to me.
| monkeytype self role assignment | ≥200wpm English 60s leaderboard | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Layout Users | 21560.7 | 65 |
| Alternative Layout Users | 1986.3 | 14 |
| Total | 23547 | 79 |
| Proportion of Alternative Layout Users | 8.4354694865588% | 17.7215189873418% |
I also thought that it's likely that those users who do use alternative keyboard layouts are more likely to voluntarily report their layout than those who use a standard keyboard layout. I suggested that they might be up to twice as likely to report their layout when compared to standard layout users. Looking at the data in Table III, this would mean that speedtypists who have achieved over 200 words per minute were up to 159% more likely (6.83514439327601% ÷ 8.4354694865588% − 100%) to use an alternative keyboard layout. In my opinion this estimate is somewhat low, even for speedtypists, and I hypothesize that prevalence of alternative keyboard layouts in the general population is likely much lower than 1%.
| monkeytype self role assignment | ≥200wpm English 60s leaderboard | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Layout Users | 20534 | 65 |
| Alternative Layout Users | 1506.5 | 14 |
| Total | 23547 | 79 |
| Proportion of Alternative Layout Users | 6.83514439327601% | 17.7215189873418% |
Overall, these findings seem to suggest that usage of alternative keyboard layouts is associated with a personal best typing speed over 200 words per minute, but the mechanism for this is currently unknown. This data was collected in April & May of 2023. If interested, download the spreadsheet containing more details.