British and American keyboards
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There are two major
English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
computer keyboard A computer keyboard is a built-in or peripheral input device modeled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or Push-button, keys to act as Mechanical keyboard, mechanical levers or Electronic switching system, electro ...
layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout defined in BS 4822 (48-key version). Both are
QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...
layouts. Users in the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
do not frequently need to make use of the £ (pound) and (euro) currency symbols, which are common needs in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
and
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
, although the $ (dollar sign) symbol is also provided as standard on UK and Irish keyboards. In other countries which predominantly use English as a common working language, such as
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
(in English-speaking parts), and
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
, the US keyboard is commonly used.


Windows keyboards

The UK variant of the Enhanced keyboard commonly used with
personal computers A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
designed for
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
differs from the US layout as follows: * The UK keyboard has 1 more key than the U.S. keyboard (UK=62, US=61, on the typewriter keys, 102 v 101 including function and other keys, 105 vs 104 on models with Windows keys) * The extra key is added next to the
Enter key On computer keyboards, the enter key and return key are two closely related keys with overlapping and distinct functions dependent on operating system and application. Functions The return key has its origins in two typewriter functions: c ...
to accommodate (
number sign The symbol is known as the number sign, hash, (or in North America) the pound sign. The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes including the designation of an ordinal number and as a Typographic ligature, ligatured abbre ...
) and (
tilde The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
) * The Alt key to the right of the space bar is replaced by an AltGr key * The (
pound sign The pound sign () is the currency symbol, symbol for the pound unit of account, unit of Pound sterling, sterling – the currency of the United Kingdom and its associated Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories and previously of Kin ...
) takes the place vacated by the number sign on the key * The (
negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...
) takes the place vacated by tilde on the (
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...
) key ** produces ** produces ( broken bar, shown as a secondary symbol) * (
Euro sign The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E (or epsilon), crossed by ...
) is produced by and is shown as a secondary symbol * and are swapped (to and , respectively) * The key is moved to the left of the key ( still produces ) * The Enter key spans two rows, and is narrower to accommodate the #/~ key * AltGr+vowel produces the
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
variant of that vowel as needed for Irish.
Diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s used in Scots Gaelic and Welsh require the UK extended keyboard setting. * Some UK keyboards do not label
Backspace Backspace (, ⌫) is the keyboard key that in typewriters originally pushed the carriage one position backwards, and in modern computer systems typically moves the display cursor one position backwards,The meaning of "backwards" depends on the dir ...
, Enter, Tab and Shift in words Early versions of Windows handled both the differences between the two keyboards and the differences between
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
and
British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
by having two English language options — a UK setting and a US setting. While adequate for users in the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
,
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, and
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
, this solution caused difficulty in other English-speaking countries. In many English-speaking jurisdictions (e.g.,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
, the
Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...
nations,
Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
,
Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
,
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
,
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
,
Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...
,
Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
,
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
, and
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
),
orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...
has traditionally conformed more closely to
British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
usage, while these countries have chosen to use the United States keyboard layout. People in these countries were as a result required to choose a system setting inconsistent with their localised version of English, thereby causing traditional British English to fall out of favour. This is particularly evident with spelling, where words such as "colour" and "centre" are flagged as being spelled incorrectly by word processing software when the operating system is set to the US setting. However, in more recent editions of Windows, the number of 'settings' options was increased, allowing users to select the correct keyboard and language variety independently. For example, one is given a number of default options for locality that will usually correctly match keyboard and language variety. Further, even if the physical keyboard is not the same as the keyboard layout used on system, it can be changed without changing the language variety.


International or extended keyboard layouts

Since the default US keyboard layout in Microsoft Windows offers no way of inputting any sort of diacritic or accent, this makes it unsuitable for all but a handful of languages unless the US International layout is used. The US International layout changes the (grave), (tilde), (
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...
), ( double quote, to make diaeresis), and (
apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...
, to make
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
) keys into
dead key A dead key is a special kind of modifier key on a mechanical typewriter, or computer keyboard, that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter (alphabet), letter. The dead key does not generate a (complete) grapheme, charact ...
s for producing accented characters: thus for example  (release)  will produce . The US International layout also uses the right alt (AltGr) as a modifier to enter special characters. The equivalent mapping for UK/Irish keyboards is called the "UK Extended" layout which, if activated in settings, will allow the user to enter a wide variety of diacritics (such as grave accents) which are not accommodated by the standard UK/Irish layout. In particular, à,è,ì,ò,ù used in Scots Gaelic can be made (using , release and then the vowel), the ŵ and ŷ used in Welsh (using (^), release, then etc.). Likewise, the Spanish and Portuguese letters ñ and õ can be made (using (~), release, then etc.). For more specialized uses, there is a facility in Windows for users to create a customized layout that may match their needs more precisely.


Apple Macintosh keyboards

The default U.S. layout on
Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
computers allows input of diacritical characters as the entire MacRoman
character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical values that make up a c ...
is directly accessible. A U.S. international layout is also available. Macintosh keyboards for British typists makes use of an Apple-custom layout. This differs significantly from the
British Standard British Standards (BS) are the standards produced by the BSI Group which is incorporated under a royal charter and which is formally designated as the national standards body (NSB) for the UK. The BSI Group produces British Standards under th ...
BS 4822 layout found on most UK keyboards. Differences include: *The and keys are swapped. *The symbol is assigned to +, rather than +. *The symbol is assigned to +, rather than a dedicated key. *The and dedicated key is absent. *The and dedicated key is present. *The and , and the and keys are moved. The U.S. layout follows the
ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...
convention of having an
enter key On computer keyboards, the enter key and return key are two closely related keys with overlapping and distinct functions dependent on operating system and application. Functions The return key has its origins in two typewriter functions: c ...
in the third row, while the UK layout follows
ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...
and has a stepped double-height key spanning the second and third rows. MacOS provides support for diacritics using either a "press and hold for pop-up menu" or a more extensive 'dead-key' facility.


Other keyboard layouts

Other operating systems can optionally re-map the keyboard layout or have different modifier keys (for example the Amiga keyboard has "A" modifier keys and BBC Micro or Acorn keyboards often had a "Shift Lock" as well as a "Caps Lock"). Under Unix/Linux the "Windows" key is often called the "Super" key and can be re-mapped by users for specific functionality but in most programs by default does nothing. Some older Unix/Linux software, such as Emacs, uses the left Alt key as a "Meta" key, which harks back to older MIT or LISP computers.
Meta key The Meta key is a modifier key on certain Computer keyboard, keyboards. It first appeared on the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) keyboard in 1970. History The Meta key first appeared on the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SA ...
ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...
uses the US and UK Windows layouts, except that the Caps-Lock key is labelled with a "fisheye" (◉) and by default acts as an "everything" search key. (There is an option in Settings to revert it to convention). The function-key row is also differently labelled. The UK-extended layout for ChromeOS is provided by a Chrome add-on, and provides ready access to a substantially greater (than Windows) repertoire of
precomposed character A precomposed character (alternatively composite character or decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can also be defined as a sequence of one or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diac ...
s for western, central and eastern European (Latin alphabet) languages.


Dvorak layouts

There are also Dvorak Layouts for each region.


Typewriters


See also

*
Keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. Standard keybo ...
* Technical standards in Hong Kong


References

{{keyboard layouts Latin-script keyboard layouts keyboards Computer keyboard types