Colemak (a reply to Cadey)

Cadey Ratio reports that she is trying to learn the Colemak keyboard layout, and asks for help.

I've been using Colemak since 2014. I switched because I thought it would be better for my RSI, which had occasionally been bad since 2006 or so. And it has been; I haven't had any wrist pain to speak of since then. I transitioned to using it fairly slowly, doing lessons/drills first without using it in earnest. I believe I used 'Learn Colemak in 9 Days' for my drills. I then switched to using it exclusively at home until I was back up over 40 WPM, and then switched at work.

I was pretty active on the Colemak forum for a while, and I do check back there now and then. But it's not that great a resource for beginners now, because the most active users have switched to using and promoting strange Colemak variants rather than vanilla Colemak.

My typing speed has never fully gotten back up to where it was when I was exclusively using QWERTY, but it's not bad; it was around 90-100 WPM, and now it's around 80. My QWERTY speed tanked, and has only recovered up to about 50 WPM, and I kind of have to be looking at the keyboard to establish the "context" for QWERTY. I don't have any keyboards with Colemak labels.

The speed loss isn't that bad; I still type faster than most people can, and it's nice not having wrist pain. Though mouse avoidance and especially avoiding scroll wheels, does more for me than the keyboard, I think.

Anyway, hope all this rambling helps.

Cadey's post

Colemak keyboard layout.

Learn Colemak in 9 Days.