If typing hurts your wrists, consider switching to a better keyboard layout. In 2005, I switched to Dvorak and completely eliminated painful, chronic RSI issues in a matter of weeks.
The appeal of alternate keyboards is intuitive:
- Less finger movement — ~30% less than QWERTY
- Increased home row usage — 30-40% more than QWERTY
- More balanced hand usage — QWERTY favors left hand by 15%
- Reduces awkward keystrokes for common key combinations
Dvorak is a great layout and I recommend it over QWERTY, but if I were relearning a new layout today, I would choose Colemak.
Colemak was released in 2006 and unbiased keystroke models developed in 2009 show that Colemak outperforms QWERTY by requiring 36% less finger movement to type the same text. The other reason I recommend Colemak over Dvorak now is because it moves fewer keys to new locations… and crucially doesn’t move any of the most commonly used shortcut keys (Z/X/C/V).
See on mkweb.bcgsc.ca
