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    Dvorak -> colemak / qwerty

    • Started by olanordmann
    • 5 Replies:
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    • Registered: 10-Jul-2010
    • Posts: 13

    Well until a couple of years ago I was hunting and pecking away with qwerty at more or less terrible speeds, so I decided to learn touch typing and I taught myself no-dvorak (norwegian dvorak) and I was up to a decent speed (75 - 80 WPM Norwegian 60-65 English and 35-40 japanese) but my pinkies didn't love me at all. And I really love the focus on rolls in colemak. After 3 days of practice (one one the homerow) I'm now typing at 19 WPM with 94% accuracy according to keybr.com , So that isn't too bad, I don't use a mouse, so I get quite a lot of practice (puppy linux + ratpoison), but I hop over to QWERTY hunt and peck when I need something to be written faster, thinking that it would be easier than jumping over to no-dvorak again.
    The only problem I have now is that my accuracy drastically sinks when I'm not writing in keybr, and my frustration levels shoot up, but I think I just need to give it some time, only some days of practice this far..

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    • From: Belgium
    • Registered: 26-Feb-2008
    • Posts: 482

    The first few days are the hardest, and switching back and forth "to type something quickly" only made it worse in my experience.

    A good alternative (if you can't afford the slowness at work) is the "qwerty (or no-dvorak for you) by day, colemak by night" approach.  The different contexts (work/home) make it easier for your brain to switch.

    Or just hang on a few more days.  After a week or so, you'll have a good enough basis, and from there on you'll slowly gain confidence AND speed.

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    I've also seen that the first days for sure was the hardest, the good thing is that I feel the improvement, and I try to take pleasure the times that I manage a good sequence ;)

    I'm a student by day, so most of my day I use a mechanical pencil and paper, If I could get a hang of stenography and I would be happy.

    So I think that I will go the hang on a couple of more days route.

    I was writing a bit Norwegian again on colemak yesterday and it seems like the rolls work even better there, and apart from some keys that has a different frequency, I don't think that that either will mean that I will face any problems, I have to say that colemak really is a good layout :)

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    • Registered: 10-Jul-2010
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    Well, some more days have gone by now, and I'm slowly improving :) up to about 25 WPM now, and my accuracy is also improving. It feels like colemak is more comfortable to me than dvorak, well for now it may be that I'm typing at a lower speed though :) Well at least I'm going on strong ;)

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    • Registered: 10-Jul-2010
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    I'm now up in 40 WPM, and I think that I am at some plateau now, been hovering about 40 WPM for about 5 days now, any tips, is it generally better to focus on accuracy to get past these kind of speedbumps?
    so 40 wpm after 20 hours of training and my daily writing, I hope that it will contiue working wonders, I'm finally starting to appreciate the rolls of colemak now, and the whole thing feels a lot more natural. more than even dvorak did to me, so I'm here to stay, now over to building that speed...

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,371

    Hallo der, Ola!!! Hjertelig velkommen til Colemak!   :)

    I'd generally recommend focusing on typing comfortably and safely at your stage. Speed pushing shouldn't be given much focus (yet) I feel. What keeps my own speed down is mostly typos anyway. If you could get hold of a decent game like Typing Of The Dead, it trains different aspects of typing in a fun way. Same with TypingMaster for instance. Might be useful, or at the very least interesting.

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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