Legend has it that Qwerty was dreamt up with the express purpose of slowing typists down.

They may not be quite as superstitious as athletes, but authors regularly admit to having favourite writing spots and props that keep the words flowing. Agatha Christie plotted in a large Victorian bathtub, munching on apples as she contemplated murder. DH Lawrence preferred to compose outdoors, leaning against a gnarly tree trunk. And James Joyce wrote in bed, dressed in a white coat and using a blue pencil. Others get attached to their hardware – George RR Martin won’t be parted from his word processor, and Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe are all still stuck on typewriters.

Yet what you won’t find even these hardcore Remington devotees enthusing about is the layout of the keyboards on which they pound day after day. That wordsmiths themselves should overlook this defining characteristic of the tool most vital to their trade is telling. While every other aspect of the way we commit printed words to record has changed in the past 100 years, the layout of the keys we type with has remained static, despite having evolved to meet thoroughly bygone challenges. Across devices in the English-speaking world, a single system rules, almost as immutable as the alphabet itself: Qwerty.

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