Designed by Shai Coleman, Colemak is an alternate QWERTY layout that changes the position of 17 keys to reduce the movement of your fingers by over 50% (the ZXCV keys are the same, so undo, cut, copy and paste should be the same). According to tests, Colemak uses the home row 74% of the time versus 34% for QWERTY, not to mention that the latter requires a 193% increase in base effort.

Dvorak also beats QWERTY in efficiency but its layout isn’t as intelligent as Colemak, which distributes loads more evenly between your left and right hands, places a greater burden on your strongest fingers (index and middle), while simultaneously putting your pinkies to greater use. Additionally, Dvorak changes more keys on a QWERTY board than Colemak does, making it harder to learn with less potential results.

The QWERTY layout, which is the most common layout used in the United States, is considered to be one of the least efficient layouts.

See this TechSpot feature for more “weird” keyboard layouts…