Why would they make the semi-colon part of home row?

[AgentEL]

I assume they arranged the letters on a QWERTY keyboard so that the most commonly-used letters were in easy reach. Why did they include the ";" in there? I think it would be faster if they switched the ";" with ".".

Anyone know the motivation for this?

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: AgentEL
I assume they arranged the letters on a QWERTY keyboard so that the most commonly-used letters were in easy reach. Why did they include the ";" in there? I think it would be faster if they switched the ";" with ".".

Anyone know the motivation for this?

You assumed wrong. Qwerty was created to make common letters NOT next to each other and to slow typers down. Typists were jamming the old mechanical typewriters when the most common letters were placed together.

http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html

 

[EyeMWing]

No. It's the LEAST efficient keyboard layout ever devised. It was designed so that no two keypresses on a typewriter would trigger right next to each other, thereby getting the striking arms stuck on each other. What you're thinking of is DVORAK.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: AgentEL
I assume they arranged the letters on a QWERTY keyboard so that the most commonly-used letters were in easy reach.

Not quite. Take the letter 'E' it is very common, and isn't even on the home row. The QWERTY keyboard was set up so that in most words, you use your left hand, then right hand, then left hand, then right hand (to prevent the keys on a typewriter from hitting each other).

But I agree that the period would be much easier on the home row, swapped with the semicolon.

 

[marquee]

Originally posted by: AgentEL
I assume they arranged the letters on a QWERTY keyboard so that the most commonly-used letters were in easy reach. Why did they include the ";" in there? I think it would be faster if they switched the ";" with ".".

Anyone know the motivation for this?

They had programmers in mind!

 

[silverpig]

dvorak = made so common letters are easy to reach.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: AgentEL
I assume they arranged the letters on a QWERTY keyboard so that the most commonly-used letters were in easy reach. Why did they include the ";" in there? I think it would be faster if they switched the ";" with ".".

Anyone know the motivation for this?

Actually the letters on QWERTY keyboard were arranged to slow typists down and put commonly-used letters far apart from each other. This was to keep the old-school manual typewriters with their old striker system from sticking (which would still happen anyway). If you're not sure what I'm talking about, find an old manual typewriter and try to type 2 letters at the same time.

edit: damn, 6 posts saying the same thing at almost the same time...

 

[dabuddha]

Originally posted by: marquee

Originally posted by: AgentEL
I assume they arranged the letters on a QWERTY keyboard so that the most commonly-used letters were in easy reach. Why did they include the ";" in there? I think it would be faster if they switched the ";" with ".".

Anyone know the motivation for this?

They had programmers in mind!

lol so true!

 

[CaseTragedy]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
No. It's the LEAST efficient keyboard layout ever devised. It was designed so that no two keypresses on a typewriter would trigger right next to each other, thereby getting the striking arms stuck on each other. What you're thinking of is DVORAK.

i wonder if they could've just changed the typebar placement instead of the key placement.

 

[JBAR]

Half-assed idea to me.