Keyboard Layout, Is Inverted Number Row Better?

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Some keyboard layouts have inverted number row. Is inverted number row more efficient? Let's answer that question.

& [ { } ( = * ) + ] % 7 5 3 1 9 0 2 4 6 ~ $ 8 ! ` # ^ @ : ; < , > . " ' a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z \ | ? / _ - Programer's Dvorak Layout
Programer's Dvorak keyboard layout, has inverted number row.

Keyboard with inverted number row are: French Keyboard Layouts (AZERTY), French Ergonomic Keyboard Layouts: dvorak-fr, bepo, bvofrak (Bépo), and Programer's Dvorak .

Here is number row of conventional keyboard:

!@#$% ^&*()
12345 67890

I have tried the inverted number row, for a few weeks around 2005, but in the end i abandoned it.

One problem is that the numbers are needed often too, especially a sequence of numbers like credit cards, ID numbers, dates “2010-08-30” or if you do a lot scientific programing with code such as x^2 - 1/5 * 1.6. But now you need to press Shift for the numbers.

And if you type Chinese with pinyin input method, you need to type one of the number 1 2 3 4 about every 6 keystrokes. [see Chinese Input Methods]

Is Numbers Used More Often or the Symbols?

inverted number row frequency
Computer Languages Characters Frequency

is numbers used more often or the symbols? The answer depends on what type of text you type.

To compute and plot your own, see Character Frequency Plot

Keyboard Layout Design 🔠

Keyboard Layouts and Efficiency

Dvorak

Layout Efficiency