Why QWERTY and Does it Really Matter Which Order the Keys are In?

The clicketty-clacking-dinging sounds of a room full of typists bring back memories from the early days of my career…

Yes, that is the answer. It matters very much.

Have you ever wondered why the keys on the keyboard are arranged in the seemingly random order they are in? Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the Qwerty keyboard, which was then adopted in 1873 by Remington, discovered that when the keys were arranged alphabetically, the most commonly struck keys would tangle together (if, like me, you are of an age that you can remember typing on a typewriter which had metal arms) you will know how frustrating that could be. The Q-W-E-R-T-Y formation was deemed to be the layout that produced the fastest typing speed for a touch typist. Chances are, if the letters on the keyboard as we know it today were re-arranged alphabetically, we would produce gobbledygook. I know that I certainly would.

I first fell in love with typing after my very first experience on an ancient Corona typewriter when I typed out recipes for my mum as a child. I have always been fascinated with typewriters and am in awe of Tom Hanks and his wonderful collection. The clickety-clacking-dinging sounds of a room full of typists bring back memories from the early days of my career when I and three other colleagues created a tune with the bells ‘dinging’ each time we performed a carriage return. That was when you reached the end of a line of type and you had to physically reach up with your left hand and hit the protruding lever which was attached to the carriage (where the paper sat tightly behind a spring-loaded bar against the rubber-coated platen or roller), which would take you back to the beginning of a new line. The ‘ding’ of the bell signified you were nearing the end.

When I learned to type at secretarial college in 1975, we were not allowed to look at the keyboard and had to keep our eyes trained directly ahead of us while memorizing the layout of the keyboard and tapping out sentences like, ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ and ‘now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party’. We all know the first sentence contains every letter of the alphabet but the other one? Apparently, it helped the typist in using both the left and right hand in equal measures. The week we were supposed to learn numbers on the keyboard, I was ill and to this day, I cannot type numbers without looking at them.

Accuracy was also drilled into us because if we made a mistake, we would have to correct it. No ‘delete’ key existed then. It was a bottle of Tippex or fiddly paper versions which came in a tiny box — the typist’s best friend. On some of the ‘newer’ electric typewriters, there was even a correcting tape which sat just below the distinctive dual colored red and black ribbon.

We were also encouraged to clean our typewriters and every Friday, we would get our soft brushes and cloths out and lovingly clean the various working parts of our trusty machines.

Mid-way through my secretarial course, I graduated on to an Olivetti electric typewriter which was bliss after the manual version, when you had to whack the keys to get an imprint on the paper (especially if you were making carbon copies). Ever wondered where the ‘cc’ came from when we copy somebody in on an e-mail? Or ‘bcc’ — blind carbon copy.

The golf ball typewriter improved my typing skills even further because the ‘golf ball’ would rotate and pivot depending on which key you hit and, like the electric typewriter, required much less effort and was therefore much easier to type faster on. My fingers would dance across the keys like a concert pianist and with my index fingers poised over the home keys (ever wondered what those tiny bumps were on the ‘f’ and ‘j’ keys?) I would typically like the wind. My party trick for youngsters is to close my eyes and type whatever they say, extremely fast. They love it.

When I got my very first job as a secretary in a firm of local solicitors (apparently because I was the fastest and most accurate typist in the class), we typed some legal documents on thick, cream paper and if we made a mistake, we had to use a razor blade to scratch the surface of the paper off before typing over it with the correct letter. It certainly focused me to type as accurately as I possibly could.

Apparently, for most of us, getting our thoughts out and on paper (or the screen) is an easier process if we type than if we use voice recognition. Those who use Dragon or any other speech recognition software may beg to differ and we all have our preferred way of doing things. I am very fortunate because my fingers can keep up with the thoughts as they flow from my brain to the keyboard.

As a young secretary starting my career never, in my wildest dreams, did I imagine that when I struck a key on the keyboard, the letter would appear on a screen in front of me? Speaking at the ‘typewriter’ and watching letters magically appear on that screen would have sounded positively space-aged to me even as an impressionable student.

Qwerty, it seems, is here to stay and I hope it remains unchanged for a very long time. Otherwise, I will have to completely re-learn the way that my fingers hit the keys and that would be a huge undertaking after 45 years of touch typing and I am still as fascinated by the humble typewriter today as I was all those years ago.