There are a large number of
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden ty ...
keyboard layouts used for different languages written in the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...
. Many of these keyboards include some additional symbols of other languages, but there also exist layouts that were designed with the goal to be usable for multiple languages (see
Multilingual variants). This list gives general descriptions of QWERTY keyboard variants along with details specific to certain operating systems, with emphasis on
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
.
Specific language variants
English
Canada
English-speaking Canadians have traditionally used the same keyboard layout as in the United States, unless they are in a position where they have to write French on a regular basis. French-speaking Canadians respectively have favoured the Canadian French (CFR) and the Canadian French ACNOR (CFA) keyboard layouts (see
below
Below may refer to:
*Earth
*Ground (disambiguation)
*Soil
*Floor
*Bottom (disambiguation)
*Less than
*Temperatures below freezing
*Hell or underworld
People with the surname
*Ernst von Below (1863–1955), German World War I general
*Fred Below ( ...
).
United Kingdom
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 Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
and
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...
[There is a separate Gaelic keyboard layout, but this is rarely used. In all common operating systems that have a different selection for Irish, this refers to the layout that is identical with the UK layout, not the Irish Gaelic layout; the latter tends to be called Gaelic or similar and supports ]Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
as well. The other Insular Celtic languages
Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany ...
have their own layout. use a keyboard layout based on the 48-key version defined in the (now withdrawn)
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 the ...
BS 4822. It is very similar to that of the United States, but has an AltGr key and a larger Enter key, includes £ and € signs and some rarely used
EBCDIC
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight- bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding ...
symbols (¬, ¦), and uses different positions for the characters @, ", #, ~, \, and , .
The BS 4822:1994 standard did not make any use of the AltGr key and lacked support for any non-ASCII characters other than ¬ and £. It also assigned a key for the non-ASCII character broken bar (¦), but lacks one for the far more commonly used ASCII character vertical bar (, ). It also lacked support for various diacritics used in the
Welsh alphabet
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic p ...
, and the
Scottish Gaelic alphabet; and also is missing the letter
yogh
The letter yogh (ȝogh) ( ; Scots Language, Scots: ; Middle English: ) was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing ''y'' () and various velar consonant , velar phonemes. It was derived from the Insular G, Insular form of the letter ...
, ȝ, used very rarely in the
Scots language
Scots ( endonym: ''Scots''; gd, Albais, ) is an Anglic language variety in the West Germanic language family, spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots). Most commo ...
. Therefore, various manufacturers have modified or extended the BS 4822 standard:
* The B00 key (left of Z), shifted, results in vertical bar (, ) on some systems (e.g. Windows UK/Ireland keyboard layout and
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
/
X11
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...
UK/Ireland keyboard layout), rather than the broken bar (¦) assigned by BS 4822 and provided in some systems (e.g.
IBM OS/2
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...
UK166 keyboard layout)
* The E00 key (left of 1) with AltGr provides either vertical bar (, ) (
OS/2
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...
's UK166 keyboard layout,
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
/
X11
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...
UK keyboard layout) or broken bar (¦) (Windows UK/Ireland keyboard layout)
Support for the diacritics needed for Scots Gaelic and Welsh was added to Windows and ChromeOS using a "UK-extended" setting (see
below
Below may refer to:
*Earth
*Ground (disambiguation)
*Soil
*Floor
*Bottom (disambiguation)
*Less than
*Temperatures below freezing
*Hell or underworld
People with the surname
*Ernst von Below (1863–1955), German World War I general
*Fred Below ( ...
); Linux and X-Windows systems have an explicit or redesignated
compose key
A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol.
For inst ...
for this purpose.
=UK Apple keyboard
=
The British version of the
Apple Keyboard
Apple Inc. has designed and released dozens of keyboard models since the introduction of the Apple II in 1977. The current models in use are dual-mode (Bluetooth and USB) keyboards with integrated batteries: Magic Keyboard (silver only), and M ...
does not use the standard UK layout. Instead, some older versions have the US layout (see below) with a few differences: the sign is reached by and the sign by , the opposite to the US layout. The is also present and is typed with . Umlauts are reached by typing and then the vowel, and ß is reached by typing .
Newer Apple "British" keyboards use a layout that is relatively unlike either the US or traditional UK keyboard. It uses an elongated return key, a shortened left with and in the newly created position, and in the upper left of the keyboard are and instead of the traditional EBCDIC codes. The middle-row key that fits inside the key has and .
United States
The arrangement of the character input keys and the
Shift key
The Shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row. The Shift key's name originated f ...
s contained in this layout is specified in the
US national standard
ANSI
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...
-
INCITS
The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), (pronounced "insights"), is an ANSI-accredited standards development organization composed of Information technology developers. It was formerly known as the X3 and NCITS. ...
154-1988 (R1999) (formerly ANSI X3.154-1988 (R1999)), where this layout is called "
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
keyboard". The complete US keyboard layout, as it is usually found, also contains the usual function keys in accordance with the international standard
ISO/IEC 9995
ISO/IEC 9995 ''Information technology — Keyboard layouts for text and office systems'' is an ISO/IEC standard series defining layout principles for computer keyboards. It does not define specific layouts but provides the base for national and in ...
-2, although this is not explicitly required by the US American national standard.
US keyboards are used not only in the United States, but also in many other English-speaking places, (except UK and Ireland), including India, Australia, Anglophone Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia that
uses the same 26-letter alphabets as English. In many other English-speaking jurisdictions (e.g.,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
, the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...
nations,
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), 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 and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
,
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
,
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mo ...
,
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...
, and
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...
), local spelling sometimes conforms more closely to
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...
usage, although these nations decided to use a US English keyboard layout. Until
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...
and later versions, when Microsoft separated the settings, this had the undesirable side effect of also setting the language to US English, rather than the local
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
.
The US keyboard layout has a second
Alt key
The Alt key (pronounced or ) on a computer keyboard is used to change (alternate) the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing ''A'' will t ...
instead of the
AltGr
AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type characters that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign cur ...
key and does not use any
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
s; this makes it inefficient for all but a handful of languages. On the other hand, the US keyboard layout (or the similar UK layout) is occasionally used by
programmers
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...
in countries where the keys for [] are located in less convenient positions on the locally customary layout.
On some keyboards the enter key is bigger than traditionally and takes up also a part of the line above, more or less the area of the traditional location of the
backslash
The backslash is a typographical mark used mainly in computing and mathematics. It is the mirror image of the common slash . It is a relatively recent mark, first documented in the 1930s.
History
, efforts to identify either the origin of ...
key (\). In these cases the backslash is located in alternative places. It can be situated one line above the default location, on the right of the
equals sign
The equals sign (British English, Unicode) or equal sign (American English), also known as the equality sign, is the mathematical symbol , which is used to indicate equality in some well-defined sense. In an equation, it is placed between tw ...
key (=). Sometimes it is placed one line below its traditional situation, on the right of the
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) 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 ...
key (') (in these cases the enter key is narrower than usual on the line of its default location). It may also be two lines below its default situation on the right of a narrower than traditionally right
shift key
The Shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row. The Shift key's name originated f ...
. A variant of this layout is used in Arabic-speaking countries.
This variant has the , \ key to the left of Z, ~ ` key where the , \ key is in the usual layout, and the > < key where the ~ ` key is in the usual layout.
Czech
The typewriter came to the
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
-speaking area in the late 19th century, when it was part of
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
where German was the dominant language of administration. Therefore, Czech typewriters have the
QWERTZ layout.
However, with the introduction of imported computers, especially since the 1990s, the QWERTY keyboard layout is frequently used for computer keyboards. The Czech QWERTY layout differs from QWERTZ in that the characters (e.g. @$& and others) missing from the Czech keyboard are accessible with AltGr on the same keys where they are located on an
American keyboard. In Czech QWERTZ keyboards the positions of these characters accessed through AltGr differs.
Danish
Both the Danish and
Norwegian keyboards include dedicated keys for the letters
Å/å,
Æ/æ and
Ø/ø, but the placement is a little different, as the and keys are swapped on the Norwegian layout. (The
Finnish–Swedish keyboard is also largely similar to the Norwegian layout, but the and are replaced with and . On some systems, the Danish keyboard may allow typing Ö/ö and Ä/ä by holding the or key while striking and , respectively.) Computers with Windows are commonly sold with ÖØÆ and ÄÆØ printed on the two keys, allowing same computer hardware to be sold in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with different operating system settings.
Dutch (Netherlands)
Though it is seldom used (most Dutch keyboards use
US International
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden type ...
layout), the Dutch layout uses QWERTY but has additions for the € sign, the
diaresis (¨), and the
braces () as well as different locations for other symbols. An older version contained a single-stroke key for the Dutch character
IJ/ij, which is usually typed by the combination of and . In the 1990s, there was a version with the now-obsolete
florin sign
The florin sign (ƒ) is a symbol that is used for the currencies named florin, also called guilder. The Dutch name for the currency is ''gulden''. The symbol "ƒ" is the lowercase version of Ƒ of the Latin alphabet. In many serif typefaces, ...
(Dutch: guldenteken) for IBM PCs.
In
Flanders
Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to cultu ...
(the
Dutch-speaking part of
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
), "AZERTY" keyboards are used instead, due to influence from the French-speaking part of Belgium.
See also
#US-International in the Netherlands below.
Estonian
The keyboard layout used in
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...
is virtually the same as the
Swedish layout. The main difference is that the and keys (to the right of ) are replaced with and respectively (the latter letter being the most distinguishing feature of the
Estonian alphabet
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also
*
...
). Some special symbols and
dead keys
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
are also moved around.
Faroese
The same as the Danish layout with added (
Eth), since the
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands ( ), or simply the Faroes ( fo, Føroyar ; da, Færøerne ), are a North Atlantic island group and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
They are located north-northwest of Scotland, and about halfway bet ...
are a self-governed part of the
Kingdom of Denmark
The Danish Realm ( da, Danmarks Rige; fo, Danmarkar Ríki; kl, Danmarkip Naalagaaffik), officially the Kingdom of Denmark (; ; ), is a sovereign state located in Northern Europe and Northern North America. It consists of metropolitan Denma ...
.
French (Canada)
The Canadian French (CFR) keyboard layout is commonly used in Canada by
French-speaking Canadians. It is the most common layout for
laptop
A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...
s and stand-alone keyboards aimed at the
Francophone
French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...
market. Unlike the AZERTY layout used in France and Belgium, it is a QWERTY layout and as such is also relatively commonly used by English speakers in the US and Canada (accustomed to using US standard QWERTY keyboards) for easy access to the accented letters found in some French
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...
s. It can be used to type all accented French characters, as well as some from other languages, and serves all English functions as well. It is popular mainly because of its close similarity to the basic US keyboard commonly used by English-speaking Canadians and Americans, historical use of US-made typewriters by French-Canadians. The right Alt key is reconfigured as an
AltGr
AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type characters that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign cur ...
key that gives easy access to a further range of characters (marked in blue and red on the keyboard image. Blue indicates an alternative character that will display as typed. Red indicates a
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
: the diacritic will be applied to the next vowel typed.) The traditional Canadian French keyboard from IBM must use an ISO keyboard. The French guillemets located on the extra key are needed to type proper French, they are not optional. A dvorak version (traditional Canadian french layout) is also supported by Microsoft® Windows®.
In this keyboard, the key names are translated to French:
* is or (short for ''Fixer''/''Verrouiller Majuscule'', meaning ''Lock Uppercase'').
* is .
* is .
The "hybrid" keyboard layout, often referred incorrectly as "canadian multilingual" or "bilingual" is a mix between the US English and the Canadian French layout over an ISO keyboard. This layout has been developed by manufacturers as a cost saving strategy first for their low end laptops. They tend to be extended to the mid-range laptops in the recent years and sold wrongly as a "French" keyboard. Today, this layout seems to be criticized by both anglophones and francophones. The anglophones accustomed to the ANSI keyboard complain about the small ISO shift on left and francophones can find these legends hard to read and messy. In this keyboard, the key names are translated in both French and English. This keyboard can be netherless useful for programming.
In 1988, the Quebec government has developed a new keyboard layout, using proper keys for ,,,,, standardized by the CSA Group and adopted also by the federal government. This layout is known as Canadian French (Legacy) today on Windows and is considered to be the ancestor to the actual Canadian Multilingual Standard. The CMS on Windows® and Linux is based on the CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 standard (launched in 1992 by the CSA Group, revised in 2021). Apple® use a layout based mostly on the standardized CSA keyboard from 1992 too, called Canadian French ― CSA. The CMS is one of the few layouts allowing to type the ligature
œ/Œ, common in French. The integral version use pictograms based on the
ISO 9995-7 standard. Unlike the traditional Canadian French keyboard developed by IBM, the CSA Keyboard is also standardized on both ISO and ANSI keyboard. The French guillemets on the CSA keyboard are located on the level 3 with the and keys. The Ù on the extra key can be replaced by a combinaison of + (dead key left from ) then or +. The ISO version still netherless needed by the Quebec government, following their higher standard named SGQRI-001. The Quebec CSA keyboard is also named Canadian French ACNOR (CFA) or Canadian International Bilingual.
Greek
* The stress accents, indicated in red, are produced by pressing that key (or shifted key) followed by an appropriate vowel.
* Use of the "AltGr" key may produce the characters shown in blue.
German
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg use
QWERTZ
The QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a typewriter and keyboard layout widely used in Central Europe. The name comes from the first six letters at the top left of the keyboard: ( ).
Overview
The main difference between QWERTZ and QWERTY is ...
layouts, where the letter Z is to the right of T.
Icelandic
The Icelandic keyboard layout is different from the standard QWERTY keyboard because the Icelandic alphabet has some special letters, most of which it shares with the other Nordic countries:
Þ/þ, Ð/ð, Æ/æ, and Ö/ö. (Æ/æ also occurs in Norwegian, Danish and Faroese, Ð/ð in Faroese, and Ö/ö in Swedish, Finnish and Estonian. In Norwegian Ö/ö could be substituted for Ø/Ø which is the same sound/letter and is widely understood).
The letters Á/á, Ý/ý, Ú/ú, Í/í, Ó/ó and É/é are produced by first pressing the
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
and then the corresponding letter. The Nordic letters Å/å and Ä/ä can be produced by first pressing , located below the key, and (for ¨) which also works for the non-Nordic ÿ, Ü/ü, Ï/ï, and Ë/ë. These letters are not used natively in Icelandic, but may have been implemented for ease of communication in other Nordic languages. Additional diacritics may be found behind the key: for ˋ (grave accent) and for ˆ (circumflex).
Irish
Windows includes an Irish layout which supports acute accents with for the
Irish language
Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...
and grave accents with the
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
for
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
. The other
Insular Celtic languages
Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany ...
have their own layout. The UK or UK-Extended layout is also frequently used.
Italian
* Braces (right above square brackets and shown in purple) are given with both AltGr and Shift pressed.
* The tilde (~) and backquote (`) characters are not present on the Italian keyboard layout (with Linux, they are available by pressing ++, and ++; Windows might not recognise these keybindings).
* When using Microsoft Windows, the standard Italian keyboard layout does not allow one to write 100% correct Italian language, since it lacks capital accented vowels, and in particular the
È key. The common workaround is writing E' (E followed by an
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) 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 ...
) instead, or relying on the auto-correction feature of several
word processor
A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current ...
s when available. It is possible to obtain the È symbol in MS Windows by typing + . Mac users, however, can write the correct accented character by pressing + + or, in the usual Mac way, by pressing the correct key for the accent (in this case + ) and subsequently pressing the wanted letter (in this case + ). Linux users can also write it by pressing the key with enabled.
There is an alternate layout, which differs only in disposition of characters accessible through , and includes the tilde and the curly brackets. It is commonly used in IBM keyboards.
Italian
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s often have the
QZERTY layout instead.
The Italian-speaking part of
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
uses the QWERTZ keyboard.
Latvian
Although rarely used, a keyboard layout specifically designed for the Latvian language called ŪGJRMV exists. The Latvian QWERTY keyboard layout is most commonly used; its layout is the same as Latin ones, but with a dead key, which allows entering special characters (āčēģīķļņōŗšūž). The most common dead key is the apostrophe ('), which is followed by Alt+Gr (Windows default for Latvian layout). Some prefer using the tick (`).
Lithuanian
Where in standard QWERTY the number row is located, you find in Lithuanian QWERTY: Ą, Č, Ę, Ė, Į, Š, Ų, Ū, Ž, instead of their counterparts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, =. If you still want to use the numbers of the mentioned 'number row', you can create them in combination with the -key. Aside from these changes the keyboard is standard QWERTY. Besides QWERTY, the
ĄŽERTY
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.
is the actua ...
layout without the adjustment of the number row is used.
Maltese
The
Maltese language
Maltese ( mt, Malti, links=no, also ''L-Ilsien Malti'' or '), is a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata spoken by the Maltese people. It is the national language of Malta and the only offic ...
uses Unicode (UTF-8) to display the Maltese diacritics: ċ Ċ; ġ Ġ; ħ Ħ; ż Ż (together with à À; è È; ì Ì; ò Ò; ù Ù). There ar
two standard keyboard layouts for Maltese according to "MSA 100:2002 Maltese Keyboard Standard"; one of 47 keys and one of 48 keys. The 48-key layout is the most popular.
Norwegian
The
Norwegian languages use the same letters as
Danish, but the Norwegian keyboard differs from the Danish layout regarding the placement of the , and (
backslash
The backslash is a typographical mark used mainly in computing and mathematics. It is the mirror image of the common slash . It is a relatively recent mark, first documented in the 1930s.
History
, efforts to identify either the origin of ...
) keys. On the
Danish keyboard, the and are swapped. The
Swedish keyboard is also similar to the Norwegian layout, but and are replaced with and . On some systems, the Norwegian keyboard may allow typing Ö/ö and Ä/ä by holding the or key while striking and , respectively.
There is also an alternative keyboard layout called ''Norwegian with Sámi'', which allows for easier input of the characters required to write various
Sámi languages
Sámi languages ( ), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, dependin ...
. All the Sámi characters are accessed through the key.
On
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
computers, the ''Norwegian'' and ''Norwegian extended'' keyboard layouts have a slightly different placement for some of the symbols obtained with the help of the or keys. Notably, the ''$'' sign is accessed with and ''¢'' with . Furthermore, the frequently used ''@'' is placed between and .
Polish
Most typewriters use a QWERTZ keyboard with
Polish letters (with diacritical marks) accessed directly (officially approved as "Typist's keyboard", pl , klawiatura maszynistki, Polish Standard PN-87), which is mainly ignored in Poland as impractical (custom-made keyboards, e.g., those in the public sector as well as some Apple computers, present an exception to this paradigm); the "Polish programmer's" ( pl, polski programisty) layout has become the ''de facto'' standard, used on virtually all computers sold on the Polish market.
Most computer keyboards in Poland are laid out according to the
standard US visual and functional layout. Polish diacritics are accessed by using the ''
AltGr
AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type characters that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign cur ...
'' key with a corresponding similar letter from the base Latin alphabet. Normal capitalization rules apply with respect to ''
Shift'' and ''
Caps Lock'' keys. For example, to enter "Ź", one can type ''Shift+AltGr+X'' with ''Caps Lock'' off, or turn on ''Caps Lock'' and type ''AltGr+X''.
Both ANSI and ISO mechanical layouts are common sights, and even some non-standard mechanical layouts are in use. ANSI is often preferred, as the additional key provides no additional function, at least in
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
where it duplicates the backslash key, while taking space from the Shift key. Many keyboards do not label ''AltGr'' as such, leaving the ''Alt'' marking as in the US layout - the right ''Alt'' key nevertheless functions as ''AltGr'' in this layout, causing possible confusion when
keyboard shortcuts
computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the operating system or ...
with the ''Alt'' key are required (these usually work only with the left ''Alt'') and causing the key to be commonly referred to as ''right Alt'' ( pl, prawy Alt). However, keyboards with ''AltGr'' marking are available and it is also officially used by Microsoft when depicting the layout.
Also, on
MS Windows, the tilde character "~" (''Shift''+''`'') acts as a
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
to type Polish letters (with diacritical marks) thus, to obtain an "Ł", one may press ''Shift''+''`'' followed by ''L''. The tilde character is obtained with (''Shift''+''`'') then ''space''.
In
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
-based systems, the euro symbol is typically mapped to Alt+5 instead of Alt+U, the tilde acts as a normal key, and several accented letters from other European languages are accessible through combinations with left Alt. Polish letters are also accessible by using the
compose key
A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol.
For inst ...
.
Software keyboards on touchscreen devices usually make the Polish diacritics available as one of the alternatives which show up after long-pressing the corresponding Latin letter. However, modern
predictive text
Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather than repeatedly ...
and
autocorrection
Autocorrection, also known as text replacement, replace-as-you-type or simply autocorrect, is an automatic data validation function commonly found in word processors and text editing interfaces for smartphones and tablet computers. Its principal ...
algorithms largely mitigate the need to type them directly on such devices.
Portuguese
Brazil
The Brazilian computer keyboard layout is specified in the
ABNT
The Brazilian Association of Technical Standards, usually rendered in Portuguese as Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT) is a private non-profit organization and the normative body which is responsible for technical standards in Bra ...
NBR 10346 variant 2 (alphanumeric portion) and 10347 (numeric portion) standards.
[ABNT (1991):]
NBR 10346 de 08/1991 - Tecnologia de informação - Teclados em equipamentos de processamento de dados - Conjunto alfanumérico -Padronização
. Available from the ABNT website. Accessed on 2021-08-15.
Essentially, the Brazilian keyboard contains dead keys for five variants of diacritics in use in the language; the letter Ç, the only application of the
cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan language, Catalan, French language, French, and Portuguese language, ...
in Portuguese, has its own key. In some keyboard layouts the + combination produces the ₢ character (
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
0x20A2), symbol for the old currency
cruzeiro, a symbol that is not used in practice (the common abbreviation in the eighties and nineties used to be Cr$). The
cent sign ¢, is accessible via +, but is not commonly used for the
centavo
The centavo (Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese 'one hundredth') is a fractional monetary unit that represents one hundredth of a basic monetary unit in many countries around the world. The term comes from Latin ''centum ...
, subunit of previous currencies as well as the current
real
Real may refer to:
Currencies
* Brazilian real (R$)
* Central American Republic real
* Mexican real
* Portuguese real
* Spanish real
* Spanish colonial real
Music Albums
* ''Real'' (L'Arc-en-Ciel album) (2000)
* ''Real'' (Bright album) (2010) ...
, which itself is represented by R$. The Euro sign € is not standardized in this layout. The masculine and feminine
ordinals ª and º are accessible via combinations. The
section sign
The section sign, §, is a typographical character for referencing individually numbered sections of a document; it is frequently used when citing sections of a legal code. It is also known as the section symbol, section mark, double-s, or si ...
§ (Unicode U+00A7), in Portuguese called ''parágrafo'', is nowadays practically only used to denote sections of laws.
Variant 2 of the Brazilian keyboard, the only which gained general acceptance (MS Windows treats both variants as the same layout),
has a unique
mechanical layout, combining some features of the
ISO 9995
ISO/IEC 9995 ''Information technology — Keyboard layouts for text and office systems'' is an ISO/ IEC standard series defining layout principles for computer keyboards. It does not define specific layouts but provides the base for national and in ...
-3 and the ''JIS'' keyboards in order to fit 12 keys between the left and right Shift (compared to the American standard of 10 and the international of 11). Its modern,
IBM PS/2
The Personal System/2 or PS/2 is IBM's second generation of personal computers. Released in 1987, it officially replaced the IBM PC, XT, AT, and PC Convertible in IBM's lineup. Many of the PS/2's innovations, such as the 16550 UART (serial p ...
-based variations, are thus known as 107-keys keyboards, and the original PS/2 variation was 104-key. Variant 1, never widely adopted, was based on the ISO 9995-2 keyboards. To make this layout usable with keyboards with only 11 keys in the last row, the rightmost key (/?°) has its functions replicated across the +, +, and + combinations.
Portugal
Essentially, the Portuguese keyboard contains dead keys for five variants of diacritics; the letter Ç, the only application of the
cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan language, Catalan, French language, French, and Portuguese language, ...
in Portuguese, has its own key, but there are also a dedicated key for the
ordinal indicator
In written languages, an ordinal indicator is a character, or group of characters, following a numeral denoting that it is an ordinal number, rather than a cardinal number. In English orthography, this corresponds to the suffixes ''-st'', ''- ...
s and a dedicated key for
quotation mark
Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...
s. The + combination for producing the
euro sign
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...
€ (
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
0x20AC) has become standard. On some QWERTY keyboards the key labels are translated, but the majority are labelled in English.
During the 20th century, a different keyboard layout,
HCESAR
HCESAR () is an obsolete Portuguese typewriter keyboard layout. It was created by decreeDecreto-Lei n.º 27 868, de 17 de julho de 1937. on July 17, 1937, under the Estado Novo regime. The purpose of the layout was to place the most frequently us ...
, was in widespread use in
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...
.
Romanian
The current Romanian National Standard SR 13392:2004 establishes two layouts for
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
** Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
keyboards: a "primary" one and a "secondary" one.
The "primary" layout is intended for traditional users who have learned how to type with older, Microsoft-style implementations of the Romanian keyboard. The "secondary" layout is mainly used by programmers as it does not contradict the physical arrangement of keys on a US-style keyboard. The "secondary" arrangement is used as the default Romanian layout by
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
distributions, as defined in the "X Keyboard Configuration Database".
There are four
Romanian-specific characters that are incorrectly implemented in versions of Microsoft Windows until Vista came out:
*
Ș (U+0218, S with comma), incorrectly implemented as
Ş (U+015E, S with cedilla)
* ș (U+0219, s with comma), incorrectly implemented as ş (U+015F, s with cedilla)
*
Ț (U+021A, T with comma), incorrectly implemented as
Ţ (U+0162, T with cedilla)
* ț (U+021B, t with comma), incorrectly implemented as ţ (U+0163, t with cedilla)
The cedilla-versions of the characters do not exist in the Romanian language (they came to be used due to a historic bug). The UCS now says that encoding this was a mistake because it messed up Romanian data and the letters with cedilla and the letters with comma are the same letter with a different style.
Since Romanian hardware keyboards are not widely available, Cristian Secară has created a driver that allows Romanian characters to be generated with a US-style keyboard in all versions of Windows prior to Vista through the use of the AltGr key modifier.
Windows Vista and newer versions include the correct diacritical signs in the default Romanian Keyboard layout.
This layout has the Z and Y keys mapped like in English layouts and also includes characters like the 'at' (@) and dollar ($) signs, among others. The older cedilla-version layout is still included albeit as the 'Legacy' layout.
Slovak
In
Slovakia
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the ...
, similarly to the Czech Republic, both QWERTZ and QWERTY keyboard layouts are used.
QWERTZ
The QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a typewriter and keyboard layout widely used in Central Europe. The name comes from the first six letters at the top left of the keyboard: ( ).
Overview
The main difference between QWERTZ and QWERTY is ...
is the default keyboard layout for
Slovak in Microsoft Windows.
Spanish
Spain
The Spanish keyboard layout is used to write in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
and in other languages of Spain such as
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
,
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
,
Galician,
Aragonese,
Asturian and
Occitan. It includes
Ñ for Spanish, Asturian and Galician, the acute accent, the diaeresis (diacritic), diaeresis, the inverted question and exclamation marks (¿, ¡), the superscripted o and a (º, ª) for writing abbreviated Ordinal number (linguistics), ordinal numbers in masculine and feminine in Spanish and Galician, and finally, some characters required only for typing Catalan and Occitan, namely Ç, the grave accent and the interpunct (' / ', used in ''l·l, n·h, s·h''; located at Shift-3). It can also be used to write other international characters, such as those using a circumflex accent (used in French and Portuguese among others) or a tilde (used in both Spanish and Portuguese), which are available as
dead keys
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
. However, it lacks two characters used in Asturian: Asturian language, Ḥ and Ḷ (historically, general support for these two has been poor – they are not present in the ISO 8859-1 character encoding standard, or any other ISO/IEC 8859 standard). Several alternative distributions, based on this one or created from scratch, have been created to address this issue (see the Keyboard layout#Other original layouts and layout design software, Other original layouts and layout design software section for more information).
On most keyboards, € is marked as Alt Gr + E and not Alt Gr + 5 as shown in the image. However, in some keyboards, € is found marked twice. An alternative version exists, supporting all of ISO 8859-1.
Spanish keyboards are usually labelled in Spanish instead of English, its abbreviations being:
On some keyboards, the c-cedilla key (Ç) is located one or two lines above, rather than on the right of, the acute accent key (´). In some cases it is placed on the right of the plus sign key (+), while in other keyboards it is situated on the right of the inverted exclamation mark key (¡).
Latin America, officially known as Spanish Latinamerican sort
The Latin American
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
keyboard layout is used throughout Mexico, Central America, Central and South America. Before its design, Latin American vendors had been selling the Spanish (Spain) layout as default.
Its most obvious difference from the Spanish (Spain) layout is the lack of a Ç key; on Microsoft Windows it lacks a tilde, tilde (~)
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
, whereas on Linux systems the dead tilde can be optionally enabled. This is not a problem when typing in Spanish, but it is rather problematic when typing in Portuguese language, Portuguese, which can be an issue in countries with large commercial ties to Brazil (Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay).
Normally "Bloq Mayús" is used instead of "Caps Lock", and "Intro" instead of "Enter".
Swedish
The central characteristics of the Swedish language, Swedish keyboard are the three additional letters
Å/å, Ä, Ä/ä, and Ö, Ö/ö. The same visual layout is also in use in Finland and
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...
, as the letters Ä/ä and Ö/ö are shared with the Swedish language, and even Å/å is needed by Swedish-speaking Finns. However, the #Finnish multilingual keyboard, Finnish multilingual keyboard adds new letters and punctuation to the functional layout.
The #Norwegian, Norwegian keyboard largely resembles the Swedish layout, but the and are replaced with and . The
Danish keyboard is also similar, but it has the and swapped. On some systems, the Swedish or Finnish keyboard may allow typing Ø/ø and Æ/æ by holding the or key while striking and , respectively.
The ''Swedish with Sámi'' keyboard allows typing not only Ø/ø and Æ/æ, but even the letters required to write various
Sámi languages
Sámi languages ( ), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, dependin ...
. This keyboard has the same function for all the keys engraved on the regular Swedish keyboard, and the additional letters are available through the key.
On
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
computers, the ''Swedish'' and ''Swedish Pro'' keyboards differ somewhat from the image shown above, especially as regards the characters available using the or keys. (on the upper row) produces the ''°'' sign, and produces the ''€'' sign. The digit keys produce ''©@£$∞§, []≈'' with and ''¡"¥¢‰¶\≠'' with .
On
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
systems, the Swedish keyboard may also give access to additional characters as follows:
* first row: ''¶¡@£$€¥\±'' and ''¾¹²³¼¢⅝÷«»°¿¬''
* second row: ''@ł€®þ←↓→œþ"~'' and ''ΩŁ¢®Þ¥↑ıŒÞ°ˇ''
* third row: ''ªßðđŋħjĸłøæ´'' and ''º§ÐªŊĦJ&ŁØÆ×''
* fourth row: '', «»©""nµ¸·̣ '' and ''¦<>©‘’Nº˛˙˙''
Several of these characters function as
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
s.
Turkish
As of 2022, the majority of Turkish keyboards are based on QWERTY (the so-called Q-keyboard layout), although there is also the older Keyboard layout#Turkish F-keyboard, F-keyboard layout specifically designed for the language.
Vietnamese
The Vietnamese language, Vietnamese keyboard layout is an extended Latin QWERTY layout. The letters Ă, Â, Ê, and Ô are found on what would be the number keys – on the US English keyboard, with – producing the tonal marks (grave accent, hook above, hook, tilde, acute accent and dot (diacritic)#Underdot, dot below, in that order), producing Đ, producing the Vietnamese đồng, đồng sign (₫) when not shifted, and brackets () producing Ư and Ơ.
Multilingual variants
Multilingual keyboard layouts, unlike the default layouts supplied for one language and market, try to make it possible for the user to type in any of several languages using the same number of keys. Mostly this is done by adding a further virtual layer in addition to the -key by means of (or 'right ' reused as such), which contains a further repertoire of symbols and diacritics used by the desired languages.
This section also tries to arrange the layouts in ascending order by the number of possible languages and not chronologically according to the Latin alphabet as usual.
Canadian Multilingual Standard
The Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard layout is used by some Canadians, mostly in Quebec and New-Brunswick. Though the caret (^) is missing, it is easily inserted by typing the circumflex accent followed by a space. This layout use three levels and two groups, up to 5 characters per key. Alt-Gr key is used to type a character on the level 3 and the Group 2 has a dedicated key instead of the Right-Ctrl .
United Kingdom (Extended) Layout
Windows
From Microsoft Windows XP, Windows XP SP2 onwards, Microsoft has included a variant of the British QWERTY keyboard (the "United Kingdom Extended" keyboard layout) that can additionally generate several diacritic, diacritical marks. This supports input on a standard physical UK keyboard for many languages without changing positions of frequently used keys, which is useful when working with text in Welsh language, Welsh,
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
and Irish — languages native to parts of the UK (Wales, Gàidhealtachd, parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively).
In this layout, the grave accent key () becomes, as it also does in the US International layout, a
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
modifying the character generated by the next key pressed. The apostrophe, double-quote, tilde and circumflex (caret (disambiguation), caret) keys are not changed, becoming dead keys only when 'shifted' with . Additional precomposed characters are also obtained by shifting the 'normal' key using the key. The extended keyboard is software installed from the Windows Control Panel (Windows), control panel, and the extended characters are not normally engraved on keyboards.
The UK Extended keyboard uses mostly the AltGr key to add diacritics to the letters a, e, i, n, o, u, w and y (the last two being used in Welsh) as appropriate for each character, as well as to their capitals. Pressing the key and then a character that does not take the specific diacritic produces the behaviour of a standard keyboard. The key presses followed by spacebar generate a stand-alone mark.:
* grave accents (e.g. à, è, etc.) needed for Scots Gaelic are generated by pressing the grave accent (or 'backtick') key , which is a dead key, then the letter. Thus produces à.
* acute accents (e.g. á) needed for Irish are generated by pressing the key together with the letter (or acting as a dead key combination followed by the letter). Thus produces á; produces Á. (Some programs use the combination of and a letter for other functions, in which case the method must be used to generate acute accents).
* the circumflex diacritic needed for Welsh may be added by , acting as a dead key combination, followed by the letter. Thus then produces â, then produces the letter ŵ.
Some other languages commonly studied in the UK and Ireland are also supported to some extent:
* diaeresis (diacritic), diaeresis or umlaut (e.g. ä, ë, ö, etc.) is generated by a dead key combination , then the letter. Thus produces ä.
* tilde (e.g. ã, ñ, õ, etc., as used in Spanish and Portuguese) is generated by dead key combination , then the letter. Thus produces ã.
*
cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan language, Catalan, French language, French, and Portuguese language, ...
(e.g. ç) under c is generated by , and the capital letter (Ç) is produced by
The and letter method used for acutes and cedillas does not work for applications which assign shortcut menu functions to these key combinations.
These combinations are intended to be mnemonic and designed to be easy to remember: the circumflex accent (e.g. â) is similar to the free-standing circumflex (caret) (
^
), printed above the key; the diaeresis/umlaut (e.g. ö) is visually similar to the double-quote (
"
) above on the UK keyboard; the tilde (
~
) is printed on the same key as the .
The UK Extended layout is almost entirely transparent to users familiar with the UK layout. A machine with the extended layout behaves exactly as with the standard UK, except for the rarely used grave accent key. This makes this layout suitable for a machine for shared or public use by a user population in which some use the extended functions.
Despite being created for multilingual users, UK-Extended in Windows does have some gaps — there are many languages that it cannot cope with, including Romanian and Turkish, and all languages with different character encoding, character sets, such as Greek and Russian. It also does not cater for thorn (letter), thorn (þ, Þ) in Old English, the ß in German, the œ in French, nor for the å, æ, ø, ð, þ in Nordic languages.
ChromeOS
The UK Extended layout in ChromeOS provides all the same combinations as with Windows, but adds many more symbols and dead keys via AltGr.
Notes: Dotted circle (◌) is used here to indicate a dead key. The key is the only one that acts as a free-standing dead key and thus does not respond as shown on the key-cap. All others are invoked by AltGr.
(°) is a degree sign; (º) is a masculine
ordinal indicator
In written languages, an ordinal indicator is a character, or group of characters, following a numeral denoting that it is an ordinal number, rather than a cardinal number. In English orthography, this corresponds to the suffixes ''-st'', ''- ...
*Dead keys
** produces grave accents (e.g., ) ( produces a standalone grave sign).
** (release) produces diaeresis accents (e.g., )
**(release) produces circumflex accents (e.g., )
** (release) produces (mainly) Comma#Diacritical usage, comma diacritic or cedilla below the letter e.g.,
** (release) produces a hook (diacritic) on vowels (e.g., )
**AltGr+[ same as AltGr+2
**AltGr+] same as AltGr+#
**(release) produces macron (diacritic), macrons (e.g., )
**(release) produces mainly horn (diacritic)s (e.g., )
**(release) produces an adjacent horn (e.g., )
**(release) produces acute accents (e.g., )
**(release) produces double acute accents on some letters (e.g., ) that exist in Unicode as pre-composed characters
** (release) produces acute accents (e.g., )
** (release) produces caron (haček) diacritics (e.g., )
** (release) produces tilde diacritics (e.g., )
** (release) produces inverted breve diacritics (e.g., )
**(release) produces mainly dot (diacritic)#Underdot, underdots (e.g., )
**(release) produces mainly dot (diacritic)#Overdot, overdots (e.g., )
Finally, any arbitrary Unicode glyph can be produced given its hexadecimal code point: , release, then the hex value, then or . For example (release) produces the Ethiopic syllable SEE, ሴ.
US-International
Windows and Linux
An alternative layout uses the physical US keyboard to type diacritics in some operating systems (including Windows). This is the US-International layout setting, which uses the right key as an key to support many additional characters directly as an additional shift key. (Since many smaller keyboards do not have a right- key, Windows also allows + to be used as a substitute for .) This layout also uses keys , , , and as
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
s to generate characters with diacritics by pressing the appropriate key, then the letter on the keyboard. The international keyboard is a software setting installed from the Windows control panel or similar; the additional functions (shown in blue) may or may not be engraved on the keyboard, but are always functional. It can be used to type most major languages from Western Europe: Afrikaans language, Afrikaans,
Danish, Dutch language, Dutch, English language, English, Faroese language, Faroese, Finnish language, Finnish, French language, French, German language, German, Icelandic language, Icelandic, Irish language, Irish, Italian language, Italian, Norwegian language, Norwegian, Portuguese language, Portuguese,
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, and Swedish language, Swedish. Some less common western and central European languages (such as Welsh language, Welsh, Maltese language, Maltese,
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
and Hungarian language, Hungarian), are not fully supported by the US-International keyboard layout because of their use of additional diacritics or precomposed characters.
A diacritic key is activated by pressing and releasing it, then pressing the letter that requires the diacritic. After the two strokes, the single character with diacritics is generated. Note that only certain letters, such as vowels and "n", can have diacritics in this way. To generate the symbols ', `, ", ^ and ~, when the following character is capable of having a diacritic, press the after the key.
Characters with diacritics can be typed with the following combinations:
* + vowel → vowel with acute accent, e.g., → é
* + vowel → vowel with grave accent, e.g., → è
* + vowel → vowel with diaeresis (or umlaut), e.g., → ë
* + vowel → vowel with circumflex accent, e.g., → ê
* + , or → letter with tilde, e.g. → ñ, → õ
* + → ç (Windows) or ć (X11)
The US-International layout is not entirely transparent to users familiar with the conventional US layout; when using a machine with the international layout setting active, the commonly used single- and double-quote keys and the less commonly used grave accent, tilde, and circumflex (caret) keys are dead keys and thus behave unconventionally. This could be disconcerting on a machine for shared or public use.
There are also alternative US-International mappings, whereby modifier keys such as shift and alt are used, and the keys for the characters with diacritics are in different places from their unmodified counterparts. For example, the right-Alt key may be remapped as an AltGr modifier key or as a
compose key
A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol.
For inst ...
and the dead key function deactivated, so that they (the ASCII quotation marks and circumflex symbol) can be typed normally with a single keystroke.
US-International in the Netherlands
The standard keyboard layout in the Netherlands is US-International, as it provides easy access to diacritics on common UK- or US-like keyboards. The #Dutch (Netherlands), Dutch layout is historical, and keyboards with this layout are rarely used. Many US keyboards sold do not have the extra US-International characters or engraved on the keys, although € () always is; nevertheless, the keys work as expected even if not marked. Many computer-literate Dutch people have retained the old habit of using + Alt codes, number codes to type accented characters; others routinely type without diacritics, then use a spelling checker to produce the correct forms.
Apple International English Keyboard
There are three kinds of
Apple Keyboard
Apple Inc. has designed and released dozens of keyboard models since the introduction of the Apple II in 1977. The current models in use are dual-mode (Bluetooth and USB) keyboards with integrated batteries: Magic Keyboard (silver only), and M ...
s for English: the #United States, United States, the #United Kingdom, United Kingdom and International English. The International English version features the same changes as the United Kingdom version, only without substituting for the symbol on , and as well lacking visual indication for the symbol on (although this shortcut is present with all Apple QWERTY layouts).
Differences from the US layout are:
# The key is located on the left of the key, and the key is located on the right of the key.
# The key is added on the left of the key.
# The left key is shortened and the key has the shape of inverted L.
Finnish multilingual
The visual layout used in Finland is basically the same as the
Swedish layout. This is practical, as Finnish language, Finnish and Swedish language, Swedish share the special characters Ä, Ä/ä and Ö, Ö/ö, and while the Swedish
Å/å is unnecessary for writing Finnish, it is needed by Swedish-speaking Finns and to write Swedish family names which are common.
As of 2008, there is a new standard for the Finnish multilingual keyboard layout, developed as part of a Internationalization and localization, localization project by CSC - IT Center for Science Ltd., CSC. All the engravings of the traditional Finnish–Swedish visual layout have been retained, so there is no need to change the hardware, but the functionality has been extended considerably, as additional characters (e.g.,
Æ/æ, Ə, Ə/ə, Ʒ, Ʒ/ʒ) are available through the key, as well as
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
s, which allow typing a wide variety of letters with diacritics (e.g., Ç, Ç/ç, Ǥ, Ǥ/ǥ, Ǯ, Ǯ/ǯ).
Based on the Latin script, Latin letter repertory included in the Multilingual European Subset No. 2 (MES-2) of the Unicode standard, the layout has three main objectives. First, it provides for easy entering of text in both Finnish and Swedish, the two official languages of Finland, using the familiar keyboard layout but adding some advanced punctuation options, such as dashes, typographical Quotation mark, non-English usage, quotation marks, and the non-breaking space (NBSP).
Second, it is designed to offer an indirect but intuitive way to enter the special letters and diacritics needed by the other three Nordic countries, Nordic national languages (
Danish, Norwegian language, Norwegian and Icelandic language, Icelandic) as well as the regional and minority languages (Northern Sámi, Southern Sámi, Lule Sámi, Inari Sami language, Inari Sámi, Skolt Sami language, Skolt Sámi, Romani language as spoken in Finland, Faroese language, Faroese, Greenlandic language, Kalaallisut also known as Greenlandic, and German language, German).
As a third objective, it allows for relatively easy entering of particularly names (of persons, places or products) in a variety of European languages using a more or less extended Latin alphabet, such as the official languages of the European Union (excluding Bulgarian language, Bulgarian and Modern Greek, Greek). Some letters, like Ł, Ł/ł needed for Slavic languages, are accessed by a special "overstrike" key combination acting like a dead key.
However, the
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
** Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
letters Ș, Ș/ș and Ț, Ț/ț (S/s and T/t with comma below) are not supported; the presumption is that Ş, Ş/ş and Ţ, Ţ/ţ (with
cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan language, Catalan, French language, French, and Portuguese language, ...
) suffice as surrogates.
EurKEY
EurKEY, a Multilingualism, multilingual keyboard layout which is intended for Europeans, programmers and translators uses true QWERTY (US layout) as base just adding a third and fourth layer available through the key and +. These additional layers allows the users to type the symbolism of many European languages, special characters, the Greek alphabet (via
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. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
s), and many common mathematical symbols.
Unlike most of the other QWERTY layouts which are standards for a country or region, EurKEY is not a standard of the European Union, yet that is why a petition of EurKEY#Petition of EurKEY as European standard, EurKEY as European standard was started.
To address the ergonomics issue of QWERTY, EurKEY#EurKEY Colemak-DH, EurKEY Colemak-DH was also developed a Colemak#Variants, Colmak-DH version with the EurKEY design principals.
See also
*Dvorak Simplified Keyboard#Other languages, Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, designed for Brazilian Portuguese
References
Informational notes
Citations
{{DEFAULTSORT:Qwerty keyboard language variants
Latin-script keyboard layouts
Computing-related lists