Why is the keyboard laid out QWERTY? The myths and facts behind it

Look at the top row of your keyboard: Q, W, E, R, T, Y. This layout is used on computers, phones and tablets all over the world. But why aren't the letters in alphabetical order?

It started with the typewriter

The QWERTY layout comes from a typewriter developed by Christopher Latham Sholes and his colleagues in the United States in the 1870s. Their typewriter was later manufactured by E. Remington and Sons.

The letter arrangement went through many trials before it became close to what we know today. It can be seen in Sholes's patent published in 1878.

The popular myth: to make typing slower

The most common story is that QWERTY was deliberately designed to slow typists down, so the typebars inside the typewriter wouldn't jam against each other.

There's some truth here. Early typewriters could jam when neighbouring typebars were struck quickly. Separating letter pairs that are often used together helped reduce that problem. But that isn't the same as deliberately slowing typists down.

Did you know? Researchers Koichi and Motoko Yasuoka of Kyoto University argue that the QWERTY layout was also shaped by the needs of telegraph operators transcribing Morse code messages, who were among the typewriter's early users.

Why do we still use it?

After the Remington typewriter became popular, lots of people learned to type on QWERTY. Typing schools, offices and manufacturers all followed the same layout.

Once a standard is widely used, it's very hard to change, even when alternatives exist. The Dvorak layout, for example, was patented in 1936 and designed so that the most-used letters sit on the middle row. But it never replaced QWERTY.

The takeaway

QWERTY wasn't designed to make our lives harder. It's the result of typewriter limitations, the needs of early users and the power of habit. Almost 150 years later, we're still typing on the same legacy.