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> I'd be curious to know what others have found the learning curve to be—how long it takes to "break even" and whether efficiency continues to improve for months

I've been using a swype keyboard for so long I can barely remember hacking away with both thumbs, but the adjustment period for me was pretty quick. The key is to just trust the software to detect your swypes and then correct any errors after the fact (vs real-time). After a while both you and the keyboard's recognition ability will get better and your accuracy will improve. Special characters are a pain, but a pain you'll learn to live with given the potential efficiency gains.

> On a somewhat related note, I've been trying Swype recently. After a couple weeks, I'm still not more efficient than regular typing, but I could see how I might get there eventually. I'd be curious to know what others have found the learning curve to be—how long it takes to "break even" and whether efficiency continues to improve for months.

Paradoxically, the most expeditious approach to efficiently employing the benefits of swiping keyboards is to overwhelmingly express yourself using a lengthened vocabulary, because the algorithm's computations become greatly facilitated and the necessity of manually selecting among equivalent possibilities is lessened.

QWERTY Myth. QWERTY was not in fact designed to protect the keys from jamming. In 1956 it was shown that QWERTY was as fast if not faster then Dvorak.

> The myth goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea.

http://www.economist.com/node/196071

The Myth goes well with the Army report on the slowness of QWERTY.

> But then it turns out—something else the report forgot to mention—that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.

The claim is that QWERTY was designed to reduced jams. You dispute this, and link to an article showing that QWERTY is not slow. These are not the same thing.

QWERTY was designed to prevent jams. QWERTY was not designed to make typists slower.

Urban myth ... https://books.google.com/books?id=EtnyT44_c1EC&pg=PA44&lpg=P...

Huh? Can you please explain what that link has to do with what I wrote and do it in full sentences?

I read it and will say this. QWERTY had competition including speed competitions and there were no vastly better technology then. Right now there is no study that shows QWERTY is substandard to other layouts in a measurable way.

I dispute this

> This was relevant on typewriters, but of course is not relevant on computers, which have no inked bits to jam.

You are saying that QWERTY is inferior to other potential layouts. You are concluding that since QWERTY was made for jams and we don't have jams we can have better layouts, but the other layouts have not shown to be of any measurable benefit.

What is the size of device that you are trying Swype on? In my experience, Swype-like keyboards are best on smaller screens. Also I greatly prefer Swype-like keyboards for any one-handed use. (It's a shame that Swype-like keyboards are only available from third-party developers — and thus crippled by Apple – in the next small screen phone)

This is a good point. I tried it for a while on an iPhone 6, but I didn't type faster and there were some bugs that frustrated me so I quit. I now have an iPhone 7 Plus, and for some reason I've had a hankering to try it again. Maybe it's because I can no longer use my phone one-handed, and it seems like a good idea to hold with one hand and swype with the other?

I can see how swype would have a comparative advantage on smaller devices, though I'm not sure I could swype well with the thumb of the hand that is holding the device. Do people swype with thumbs? Or just the index finger?

With thumbs.

You could try two-fingered swyping on the 7 plus. That is a steeper learning curve but faster top speeds:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nintype/id796959534?mt=8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M6DS9Gyf2LM

Note that QWERTY actually fails on this count as the vowels UIO and AE are grouped together.

"A" and "E" are not that close together, and software keyboards can fairly reliably tell the difference between these key presses. "I" and "O" are indeed adjacent, and this causes typos because these letters are frequently interchangeable in words. I rarely encounter an "I" that should have been a "U", and I don't think the keyboard ever mistakes a "O" for a "U" (or vice versa). I'd be interested to know if others have trouble with A/E or U/I, and if so with which words.