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Quirky QWERTY effect found all over the web

Previous studies have found that we have more positive emotional associations with words that have a higher ratio of letters from the right side of a QWERTY keyboard – those from “Y”, “h” and “n” onwards. This is known as the QWERTY effect, reports the New Scientist magazine.

THESE days, writing in typing. And it looks as if the layout of QWERTY keyboards is influencing the way we feel about certain words

Previous studies have found that we have more positive emotional associations with words that have a higher ratio of letters from the right side of a QWERTY keyboard – those from “Y”, “h” and “n” onwards. This is known as the QWERTY effect.

Science and Technology has drastically changed the way we think. For example, when asked to rate how they felt about different words – including made-up ones such as “ploke” and “pleek” – English, Dutch and Spanish speakers have been found to rate those with a higher right-sides letter ratio more positively.

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One study even found that baby names with more right –side letters grew in popularity after QWERTY keyboards became widespread in the 1960s.

Now David Garcia at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Markus Strohmaier at the University of Koblenz-Landu in Germany have found evidence of the QWERTY effect all over the web.

The pair looked at millions of English Language product names and titles of books, films and video clips appearing on 11 websites, including Amazon, you Tubes and Rotten Tomatoes. On nine of those sites, items with names that had a higher right-sides letter ratio tended to be rated more highly by reviewers.

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Gracia and Strohmaier also looked at the text of the reviews. Those that expressed a positive opinion were found to use a higher ratio of letters from the right of the keyboard too.

Gracia says that to begin with he did not believe the findings. But the QWERTY effect popped up by again and again. However, it does not mean certain products will necessarily be more successful. The top – selling products on Amazon do not display the QWERTT effect, for example.

The pair presented their work earlier this year at the International World Wide Web Conference in Montreal, Canada.

The correlation is fascinating, says Naomi Baron at American University in Washington DC. But it is not clear whether the effect is because words with a higher right-side ratio are easier to type-or because there are more vowels on that side of the keyboard. “We don’t put emotions into most of our consonants, we put them into our vowels,” says Baron.  

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