Why are the letters on the keyboard not in alphabetical order?
One expalnation that I have seen is that it helps to prevent the letters form jamming on typewriters. Letters that are commonly typed together, such as “e” and “d” are separated to lessen the chance they will jam. Keyboards of course inherited this design from typewriters. It would be very confusing to a person who learned to use a typewriter to change if the letters were arranged differnetly on a keyboard.
A standard QWERTY keyboard is designed according to how which letters are most commonly used in language. The letters on the top line in the middle tend to be used the most then it works down and to the sides. ERTYUI being the easiest keys to get to with the index and middle fingers and so on. A few years ago somebody redesigned the layout of the keyboard splitting the letters in half and putting each block of letters apart. also the layout of the letters was changed slightly after a little research and it was found that not only was this new way faster to use , it also eliminated repetitive strain experienced by people who type alot. Unfortunately the new way was seen as too radical from the QWERTY setup and was never brought into main use.
