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I touch-type, but unlike many tech folks, I'm a really bad typist and make a huge amount of errors. Many of these errors concern symbols rather than letters: - instead of =, or (a particularly frustrating one) <ENTER> instead of '. Other errors are rooted in the physically row-staggered keys. Will alternative keyboard maps like Dvorak or Colemak help with the kinds of issues I'm facing, or are they orthogonal to my problems?

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I too make a lot of errors. In my case they are mostly due to small hands that have to travel quite a bit from the home row to hit special keys, and end up getting “lost”. The move to Colemak didn’t particularly help my error rate while programming; however, it did help the general case. Typing long blocks of text is now an absolute pleasure, my hands hardly move at all.

If Apple give me the option, I think my next MBP will get a Colemak layout. My external keyboard got a “hacked” version - it’s actually pretty sad that the mechanical-keyboard scene does not really support anything but qwerty.

Well, on dvorak, the quote key is where the q is on qwerty, so you certainly won't be accidentally hitting return!

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