Why the letters are where they are
Look at the top row of letters on almost any English-language keyboard and you will read Q, W, E, R, T, Y. The name QWERTY layout comes from those first six keys. The arrangement looks arbitrary, since it is neither alphabetical nor sorted by how often letters are used, and that has made it the subject of many stories. Some are partly true, some are doubtful, and the full story is not completely documented.
Origins on the typewriter
The layout comes from the early typewriter, not from computing. In the early 1870s, Christopher Latham Sholes, working in Milwaukee with colleagues including Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule, developed a typewriter that was later manufactured by E. Remington and Sons. Sholes’s early models went through many design revisions, and the arrangement of the keys changed along the way. Early versions are often described as having keys in something like alphabetical order, and later versions moved toward what we now call QWERTY. The Remington models of the 1870s helped to fix it in place.
When computers needed keyboards, there were already millions of trained typists and thousands of typewriters in use. Teleprinters and keypunches copied the typewriter arrangement, and computers inherited it. Once large numbers of people have learned a layout, changing it carries a real cost, however imperfect it may be. Economists and historians sometimes use the keyboard as an example of this kind of lock-in, although they disagree about how much weight the example deserves.
The popular myth
The best-known story says that QWERTY was designed to slow typists down, so that the typebars of a mechanical typewriter would not jam. The type bars swing up to strike the paper, and if neighbors are struck in quick succession they can collide. According to the story, the layout separated common letter pairs to avoid this.
There is a plausible kernel in it. Jamming was a real problem on early machines, and the designers did arrange the mechanism with that in mind, as far as we can tell. But the claim that the aim was to slow typists is a different matter. Historians and typewriter enthusiasts have questioned it, partly because the early typewriters were slow anyway and partly because later typists became very fast on the same layout. The more careful way to put it is that the arrangement was probably shaped by mechanical considerations, along with other factors, and that the motive of slowing people down is not clearly supported.
A second explanation has been proposed more recently. It suggests that the layout was shaped by the needs of telegraph operators, who transcribed messages from Morse code and who were among the first buyers of typewriters. The idea has some supporters, but it is not established fact. For now the honest answer is that the details of the choices made in the 1870s are not fully recorded, and several influences may have mattered.
Rival layouts
Alternatives to QWERTY have existed for a long time.
- Dvorak. August Dvorak and William Dealey patented an arrangement in the 1930s that put the most common letters on the home row, where fingers rest. Supporters report that it feels more comfortable. Early studies claiming large speed gains have been criticized, and later reviews have generally not found a dramatic advantage, so the case for it is modest rather than proven.
- Colemak. A newer design from the 2000s that changes fewer keys than Dvorak and keeps common shortcuts such as copy and paste in familiar places, to make switching easier.
- Regional variants. AZERTY is common in France and QWERTZ in Germany and some neighboring countries. Both are close relatives of QWERTY that move a few keys to suit local languages, and many languages add keys or accents of their own.
- Alphabetical and specialized designs. Some keyboards have been made with letters in simple alphabetical order, aimed at beginners or small devices. They tend not to help trained typists, who learn positions by touch.
Layouts in the computer era
Software has made the question of layout more flexible than it was in the typewriter era. Because operating systems can remap keys, a person can choose Dvorak or Colemak on the same hardware. Gaming and programming keyboards allow custom assignments. Phone and tablet screens use on-screen keyboards that are still mostly QWERTY, partly because users already know it, although predictive text and swiping change how letters are chosen.
Chinese, Japanese and other languages that do not use small alphabets rely on input methods in which a person types a phonetic spelling on a standard keyboard and chooses the intended characters from a list.
Why QWERTY remains
QWERTY remains because it is good enough, because it is familiar, and because switching has real costs. Alternatives may suit some individuals, and trying one is harmless, but no layout has shown a benefit large enough to persuade the world to retrain. The result is an accident of 1870s mechanics that has persisted into touch screens, an example of how early decisions can stick long after their reasons have faded.