![QWERTY keyboard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/QWERTY_keyboard.jpg)
QWERTY () is a
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.
is the actua ...
for
Latin-script alphabet
A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-letter ...
s. The name comes from the order of the first six
keys
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (map ...
on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the
Sholes and Glidden typewriter
The Sholes and Glidden typewriter (also known as the Remington No. 1) was the first commercially successful typewriter. Principally designed by the American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes, it was developed with the assistance of fello ...
and sold to
E. Remington and Sons
E. Remington and Sons (1816–1896) was a manufacturer of firearms and typewriters. Founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, on March 1, 1873, it became known for manufacturing the first commercial typewriter.
History
The r ...
in 1873. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in ubiquitous use.
History
![Continental Standard typewriter keyboard - key detail](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Continental_Standard_typewriter_keyboard_-_key_detail.jpg)
The QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by
Christopher Latham Sholes
Christopher Latham Sholes (February 14, 1819February 17, 1890) was an American inventor who invented the QWERTY keyboard, and, along with Samuel W. Soule, Carlos Glidden and John Pratt, has been contended to be one of the inventors of the first ...
, a
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
editor and printer who lived in
Kenosha
Kenosha () is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the seat of Kenosha County. Per the 2020 census, the population was 99,986 which made it the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Kenosh ...
,
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
. In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends
Carlos Glidden
Carlos Glidden (November 8, 1834 – March 11, 1877), along with Christopher Sholes, Frank Haven Hall, and Samuel W. Soule, invented the first practical typewriter at a machine shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in th ...
and
Samuel W. Soulé.
The first model constructed by Sholes used a piano-like keyboard with two rows of characters arranged alphabetically as shown below:
- 3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M
Sholes struggled for the next five years to perfect his invention, making many trial-and-error rearrangements of the original machine's alphabetical key arrangement. The study of
bigram (letter-pair) frequency by educator Amos Densmore, brother of the financial backer
James Densmore
James Densmore (February 3, 1820 – September 16, 1889) was an American businessman, inventor and vegetarian. He was a business associate of Christopher Sholes, who along with Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule helped contribute to inventing one o ...
, is believed to have influenced the array of letters, but the contribution was later called into question.
Others suggest instead that the letter groupings evolved from
telegraph
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
operators' feedback.
In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the latter half of the alphabet, O to Z, right-to-left.
In April 1870 he arrived at a four-row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard, moving six vowel letters, A, E, I, O, U, and Y, to the upper row as follows:
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -
A E I . ? Y U O ,
B C D F G H J K L M
Z X W V T S R Q P N
In 1873 Sholes's backer, James Densmore, successfully sold the manufacturing rights for the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer to
E. Remington and Sons
E. Remington and Sons (1816–1896) was a manufacturer of firearms and typewriters. Founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, on March 1, 1873, it became known for manufacturing the first commercial typewriter.
History
The r ...
. The keyboard layout was finalized within a few months by Remington's mechanics and was ultimately presented:
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - ,
Q W E . T Y I U O P
Z S D F G H J K L M
A X & C V B N ? ; R
After they purchased the device, Remington made several adjustments, creating a keyboard with essentially the modern QWERTY layout. These adjustments included placing the "R" key in the place previously allotted to the period key. Apocryphal claims that this change was made to let salesmen impress customers by pecking out the brand name "TYPE WRITER QUOTE" from one keyboard row are not formally substantiated.
Vestiges of the original alphabetical layout remained in the "
home row
Touch typing (also called blind typing, or touch keyboarding) is a style of typing. Although the phrase refers to typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys—specifically, a touch typist will know their location on the keyboard thro ...
" sequence DFGHJKL.
The modern layout is:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
Q W E R T Y U I O P \
A S D F G H J K L ; '
Z X C V B N M , . /
The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, the first typewriter to include both upper and lower case letters, using a
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 ...
.
One popular but unverified
explanation for the QWERTY arrangement is that it was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing of typebars by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther from each other inside the machine.
[David, P. A. (1986). "Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: the Necessity of History". In Parker, William N., ''Economic History and the Modern Economist''. Basil Blackwell, New York and Oxford.]
Differences from modern layout
Substituting characters
![QWERTY 1878](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/QWERTY_1878.png)
The QWERTY layout depicted in Sholes's 1878 patent is slightly different from the modern layout, most notably in the absence of the numerals 0 and 1, with each of the remaining numerals shifted one position to the left of their modern counterparts. The letter M is located at the end of the third row to the right of the letter L rather than on the fourth row to the right of the N, the letters X and C are reversed, and most
punctuation marks are in different positions or are missing entirely.
0 and 1 were omitted to simplify the design and reduce the manufacturing and maintenance costs; they were chosen specifically because they were "redundant" and could be recreated using other keys. Typists who learned on these machines learned the habit of using the uppercase letter
I (or lowercase letter
L) for the digit one, and the uppercase
O for the zero.
The 0 key was added and standardized in its modern position early in the history of the typewriter, but the 1 and exclamation point were left off some typewriter keyboards into the 1970s.
Combined characters
In early designs, some characters were produced by printing two symbols with the
carriage
A carriage is a private four-wheeled vehicle for people and is most commonly horse-drawn. Second-hand private carriages were common public transport, the equivalent of modern cars used as taxis. Carriage suspensions are by leather strapping an ...
in the same position. For instance, the
exclamation point
The exclamation mark, , or exclamation point (American English), is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, f ...
, which shares a key with the numeral 1 on post-mechanical keyboards, could be reproduced by using a three-stroke combination of an apostrophe, a backspace, and a period. A semicolon (;) was produced by printing a comma (,) over a colon (:). As the backspace key is slow in simple mechanical typewriters (the carriage was heavy and optimized to move in the opposite direction), a more professional approach was to block the carriage by pressing and holding the space bar while printing all characters that needed to be in a shared position. To make this possible, the carriage was designed to advance forward only after releasing the space bar.
In the era of mechanical typewriters, combined characters such as ''é'' and ''õ'' were created by the use of
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 th ...
s for the
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 ''diacriti ...
s (''′, ~''), which did not move the paper forward. Thus the ''′'' and ''e'' would be printed at the same location on the paper, creating ''é''.
Contemporary alternatives
There were no particular technological requirements for the QWERTY layout,
since at the time there were ways to make a typewriter without the "up-stroke" typebar mechanism that had required it to be devised. Not only were there rival machines with "down-stroke" and "frontstroke" positions that gave a visible printing point, the problem of typebar clashes could be circumvented completely: examples include
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...
's 1872 electric print-wheel device which later became the basis for
Teletype
A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...
machines;
Lucien Stephen Crandall
Lucien Stephen Crandall (May 4, 1844 – February 4, 1919) was an American inventor of typewriters, adding machines and electrical devices. Crandall gave his name to several typewriters, and he was also involved in the development of various mach ...
's typewriter (the second to come onto the American market) whose type was arranged on a cylindrical sleeve; the Hammond typewriter of 1887 which used a semi-circular "type-shuttle" of hardened rubber (later light metal); and the
Blickensderfer typewriter
The Blickensderfer Typewriter was invented by George Canfield Blickensderfer (1850–1917) and patented on August 4, 1891. Blickensderfer was the nephew of John Celivergos Zachos the inventor of the stenotype. Two models were initially unv ...
of 1893 which used a type wheel. The early Blickensderfer's "Ideal" keyboard was also non-QWERTY, instead having the sequence "DHIATENSOR" in the
home row
Touch typing (also called blind typing, or touch keyboarding) is a style of typing. Although the phrase refers to typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys—specifically, a touch typist will know their location on the keyboard thro ...
, these 10 letters being capable of composing 70% of the words in the English language.
Properties
Alternating hands while typing is a desirable trait in a keyboard design. While one hand types a letter, the other hand can prepare to type the next letter, making the process faster and more efficient. In the QWERTY layout many more words can be spelled using only the left hand than the right hand. In fact, thousands of English words can be spelled using only the left hand, while only a couple of hundred words can be typed using only the right hand
(the three most frequent letters in the English language, ETA, are all typed with the left hand). In addition, more typing strokes are done with the left hand in the QWERTY layout. This is helpful for left-
handed people but disadvantageous for right-handed people.
Contrary to popular belief, the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down,
but rather to speed up typing. Indeed, there is evidence that, aside from the issue of jamming, placing often-used keys farther apart increases typing speed, because it encourages alternation between the hands.
(On the other hand, in the German keyboard the Z has been moved between the T and the U to help type the frequent digraphs TZ and ZU in that language.) Almost every word in the English language contains at least one vowel letter, but on the QWERTY keyboard only the vowel letter "A" is on the home row, which requires the typist's fingers to leave the home row for most words.
A feature much less commented-on than the order of the keys is that the keys do not form a rectangular grid, but rather each column slants diagonally. This is because of the mechanical linkages – each key is attached to a lever, and hence the offset prevents the levers from running into each other – and has been retained in most electronic keyboards. Some keyboards, such as the
Kinesis or
TypeMatrix, retain the QWERTY layout but arrange the keys in vertical columns, to reduce unnecessary lateral finger motion.
Computer keyboards
![Qwerty](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Qwerty.svg)
The first computer terminals such as the Teletype were typewriters that could produce and be controlled by various computer codes. These used the QWERTY layouts and added keys such as
escape
Escape or Escaping may refer to:
Computing
* Escape character, in computing and telecommunication, a character which signifies that what follows takes an alternative interpretation
** Escape sequence, a series of characters used to trigger some so ...
(ESC) which had special meanings to computers. Later keyboards added
function key
A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, function ...
s and
arrow keys
Arrow keys or cursor movement keys are buttons on a computer keyboard that are either programmed or designated to move the cursor (computers), cursor in a specified direction.
The term "cursor movement key" is distinct from "arrow key" in that ...
. Since the standardization of PC-compatible computers and Windows after the 1980s, most full-sized computer keyboards have followed this standard (see drawing at right). This layout has a separate
numeric keypad
A numeric keypad, number pad, numpad, or ten key,
is the palm-sized, usually-17-key section of a standard computer keyboard, usually on the far right. It provides calculator-style efficiency for entering numbers. The idea of a 10-key nu ...
for data entry at the right, 12 function keys across the top, and a cursor section to the right and center with keys for
Insert Insert may refer to:
*Insert (advertising)
*Insert (composites)
*Insert (effects processing)
*Insert (filmmaking)
*Insert key on a computer keyboard, used to switch between insert mode and overtype mode
*Insert (molecular biology)
*Insert (SQL)
*Fi ...
,
Delete,
Home
A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. H ...
,
End
End, END, Ending, or variation, may refer to:
End
*In mathematics:
** End (category theory)
** End (topology)
**End (graph theory)
** End (group theory) (a subcase of the previous)
**End (endomorphism)
*In sports and games
**End (gridiron footbal ...
,
Page Up, and Page Down with cursor arrows in an inverted-T shape.
Diacritical marks
QWERTY was designed for
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, a language with accents ('
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 ''diacriti ...
s') appearing only in a few words of foreign origin. The standard US keyboard has no provision for these at all; the need was later met by the so-called "
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 t ...
"
keyboard mapping
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 ...
, which uses "
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 th ...
s" to type accents without having to add more physical keys. (The same principle is used in the standard US keyboard layout for
MacOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, but in a different way.) Most European (including UK) keyboards for PCs have 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 ('Alternative Graphics' key, replaces the right Alt key) that enables easy access to the most common diacritics used in the territory where sold. For example, default keyboard mapping for the UK/Ireland keyboard has the diacritics used in
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
but these are rarely printed on the keys; but to type the accents used in
Welsh
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 peop ...
and
Scots 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 ...
requires the use of a "
UK Extended
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 left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
" keyboard mapping and the dead key or
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 insta ...
method. This arrangement applies to Windows, ChromeOS and Linux; MacOS computers have different techniques. The US International and UK Extended mappings provide many of the diacritics needed for students of other European languages.
Other keys and characters
Specific language variants
Minor changes to the arrangement are made for other languages. There are a large number of different keyboard layouts used for different languages written in Latin script. They can be divided into three main families according to where the , , , , and keys are placed on the keyboard. These are usually named after the first six letters, for example this QWERTY layout and the
AZERTY
AZERTY () is a specific keyboard layout, layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboard (computing), keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letter (alphabet), letters to appear on the fir ...
layout.
In this section you will also find keyboard layouts that include some additional symbols of other languages. But they are different from layouts that were designed with the goal to be usable for multiple languages (see
Multilingual variants).
The following sections give general descriptions of QWERTY keyboard variants along with details specific to certain operating systems. The emphasis is on Microsoft Windows.
English
Canada
![ACNOR keyboard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/ACNOR_keyboard.jpg)
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 keyboard layout (see
French (Canada), below).
The
CSA keyboard
The CSA keyboard, or CAN/CSA Z243.200-92, is the official keyboard layout of Canada. Often referred to as ACNOR, it is best known for its use in the Canadian computer industry for the French ACNOR keyboard layout, published as CAN/CSA Z243.200- ...
is the official multilingual
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.
is the actua ...
of Canada.
United Kingdom
![UKUbuntu](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/UKUbuntu.png)
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 North ...
and
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
[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 ]Scots 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 a ...
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 six- ...
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 lacked 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 peopl ...
, and the
Scots 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 commonly ...
. 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
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 serv ...
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, which ...
/
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 ...
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 ...
'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, which ...
/
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 (¦) (
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 serv ...
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)
Bottom may refer to:
Anatomy and sex
* Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
); Linux and X11 systems have an explicit or reassigned
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 insta ...
for this purpose.
=UK Apple keyboard
=
![KB United Kingdom Mac - Apple Keyboard (MC184B)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/KB_United_Kingdom_Mac_-_Apple_Keyboard_%28MC184B%29.svg)
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 Mag ...
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
![KB United States-NoAltGr](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/KB_United_States-NoAltGr.svg)
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 of ...
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 ind ...
-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 tot ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, 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 Se ...
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 city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
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 mos ...
,
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, borde ...
,
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 count ...
, 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 countri ...
), local spelling sometimes conforms more closely to
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
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 Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...
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 mos ...
.
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 ty ...
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 th ...
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 o ...
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 two ...
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 o ...
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
![Qwerty cz](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Qwerty_cz.svg)
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
![KB Danish](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/KB_Danish.svg)
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)
![Nederlandse toetsenbordindeling - tekst als paden](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Nederlandse_toetsenbordindeling_-_tekst_als_paden.svg)
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, it ...
(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 culture, ...
(the
Dutch-speaking
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives German and English. ''Afrikaans'' i ...
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 th ...
), "AZERTY" keyboards are used instead, due to influence from the French-speaking part of Belgium.
See also
#US-International in the Netherlands below.
Estonian
![KB Estonian](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/KB_Estonian.svg)
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, a ...
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
![KB Faroese](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/KB_Faroese.svg)
The same as the Danish layout with added (
Eth
(colloquially)
, former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule
, image = ETHZ.JPG
, image_size =
, established =
, type = Public
, budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021)
, rector = Günther Dissertori
, president = Joël Mesot
, a ...
), 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 Denmark, metropolitan ...
.
French (Canada)
![KB Canadian French text](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/KB_Canadian_French_text.svg)
This 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 th ...
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 and historical use of US-made typewriters by French-Canadians.
It can also easily
'map' to or from a standard US QWERTY keyboard with the sole loss the
guillemet
Guillemets (, also , , ) are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double chevrons, and , used as quotation marks in a number of languages. In some of these languages "single" guillemets, and , are used for a quotation inside ano ...
/
degree sign
The degree symbol or degree sign, , is a typographical symbol that is used, among other things, to represent degrees of arc (e.g. in geographic coordinate systems), hours (in the medical field), degrees of temperature or alcohol proof. The sym ...
key. Its significant difference from the US standard is that 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 th ...
: the diacritic will be applied to the next vowel typed.)
In some variants, the key names are translated to French:
* is or (short for ''Fixer''/''Verrouiller Majuscule'', meaning ''Lock Uppercase'').
* is .
* is .
Greek
![Greek keyboard mono 3b](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Greek_keyboard_mono_3b.png)
* 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 tha ...
layouts, where the letter Z is to the right of T.
Icelandic
![KB Iceland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/KB_Iceland.svg)
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, 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 th ...
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
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 serv ...
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 th ...
for
Scots 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
![Italian Keyboard layout](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Italian_Keyboard_layout.svg)
* 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 o ...
) 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.
Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...
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
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 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 (āčēģīķļņõŗšūž). 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 offici ...
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
![KB NorwaySami](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/KB_NorwaySami.svg)
The
Norwegian languages use the same letters as
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
, 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 o ...
) 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
![Polish programmer's layout](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Polish_programmer%27s_layout.PNG)
Most typewriters use a QWERTZ keyboard with
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
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 serv ...
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
In computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several computer keyboard, keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the ...
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 th ...
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, which ...
-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 insta ...
.
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 Telephone keypad, numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather ...
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
![KB Portuguese Brazil](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/KB_Portuguese_Brazil.svg)
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 Braz ...
NBR 10346 variant 2 (alphanumeric portion) and 10347 (numeric portion) standards.
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, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ' ...
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 Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
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$). The
cent sign
The cent is a monetary unit of many national currencies that equals of the basic monetary unit.
Etymologically, the word 'cent' derives from the Latin word meaning hundred.
The cent sign is commonly a simple minuscule (lower case) letter . ...
¢, is accessible via +, but is not commonly used for the
centavo
The centavo (Spanish and Portuguese 'one hundredth') is a fractional monetary unit that represents one hundredth of a basic monetary unit in many countries around the world. The term comes from Latin ''centum'', ('one hundred'), with the added suf ...
, subunit of previous currencies as well as the current
real
Real may refer to:
Currencies
* Brazilian real (R$)
* 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 ...
§ (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
![KB Portuguese](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/KB_Portuguese.svg)
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, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ' ...
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 ...
€ (
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
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 ...
.
Romanian (in Romania and Moldova)
![Romanian-keyboard-layout](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Romanian-keyboard-layout.png)
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, traditional ...
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, which ...
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
![KB Slovak](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/KB_Slovak.svg)
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 s ...
, 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 tha ...
is the default keyboard layout for
Slovak 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 serv ...
.
Spanish
Spain
![KB Spanish](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/KB_Spanish.svg)
The Spanish keyboard layout is used to write in Spanish language, Spanish and in other languages of Spain such as Catalan language, Catalan, Basque language, Basque, Galician language, Galician, Aragonese language, Aragonese, Asturian language, Asturian and Occitan language, 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 aren't 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
![KB Latin American](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/KB_Latin_American.svg)
The Latin American Spanish language, Spanish 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 th ...
, 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
![KB Sweden](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/KB_Sweden.svg)
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, a ...
, 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 ''©@£$∞§, []≈'' with and ''¡"¥¢‰¶\≠'' with .
On
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
systems, the Swedish keyboard may also give access to additional characters as follows:
* first row: ''¶¡@£$€¥\±'' 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 th ...
s.
Turkish
![TurkishQWERTY](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/TurkishQWERTY.png)
Today 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
![Vietnamese keyboard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Vietnamese_keyboard.svg)
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.
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
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 peop ...
,
Scots 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 th ...
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, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ' ...
(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
![HP 11 G2 Chromebook G6V82ES](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/HP_11_G2_Chromebook_G6V82ES.jpg)
The UK Extended layout (a ChromeOS extension) 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
The degree symbol or degree sign, , is a typographical symbol that is used, among other things, to represent degrees of arc (e.g. in geographic coordinate systems), hours (in the medical field), degrees of temperature or alcohol proof. The sym ...
; (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
![KB US-International](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/KB_US-International.svg)
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 don't 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 th ...
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
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
, Dutch language, Dutch,
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, Faroese language, Faroese, Finnish language, Finnish, French language, French, German language, German, Icelandic language, Icelandic,
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
, Italian language, Italian, Norwegian language, Norwegian, Portuguese language, Portuguese,
Scots 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 language, Spanish, and Swedish language, Swedish. Some less common western and central European languages (such as
Welsh
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 peop ...
, 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
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 ''diacriti ...
s 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 insta ...
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
![Acer SF114-32 keyboard closeup](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Acer_SF114-32_keyboard_closeup.jpg)
The #Dutch (Netherlands), Dutch layout is historical, and keyboards with this layout are rarely used. Instead, the standard keyboard layout in the Netherlands is US-International, as the Dutch language heavily Dutch orthography#Diacritics, relies on diacritics and the US-International keyboard provides easy access to diacritics using
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 ...
. While many US keyboards do not have or extra US-International characters engraved on them, Dutch keyboards typically have the engraved at the location of the right key, and have 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 ...
engraved next to the key.
Apple International English Keyboard
![KB Intl English Mac - Apple Keyboard (MC184Z)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/KB_Intl_English_Mac_-_Apple_Keyboard_%28MC184Z%29.svg)
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 Mag ...
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.
Canadian Multilingual Standard
![KB_Canadian_Multilingual_Standard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/KB_Canadian_Multilingual_Standard.svg)
The Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard layout is used by some Canadians. Though the caret (^) is missing, it is easily inserted by typing the circumflex accent followed by a space.
Finnish multilingual
![KB Finnish Multilingual](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/KB_Finnish_Multilingual.svg)
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 th ...
s, which allow typing a wide variety of letters with
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 ''diacriti ...
s (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
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
, 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, traditional ...
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, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ' ...
) suffice as surrogates.
EurKEY
![KB EurKEY](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/KB_EurKEY.svg)
EurKEY, a Multilingualism, multilingual keyboard layout intended for Europeans, programmers and translators which uses the US-standard QWERTY layout as base and adds a third and fourth layer available through the key and +. These additional layers provide support for many Western 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 th ...
s), and many common mathematical symbols.
Unlike most of the other QWERTY layouts, which are formal standards for a country or region, EurKEY is not an EU, EFTA or any national standard.
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 principles.
Alternatives
Several alternatives to QWERTY have been developed over the years, claimed by their designers and users to be more efficient, intuitive, and ergonomic. Nevertheless, none have seen widespread adoption, partly due to the sheer dominance of available keyboards and training. Although some studies have suggested that some of these may allow for faster typing speeds,
[Paul David, "Understanding the economics of QWERTY: the necessity of history", ''Economic history and the modern economist'', 1986] many other studies have failed to do so, and many of the studies claiming improved typing speeds were severely methodologically flawed or deliberately biased, such as the studies administered by August Dvorak himself before and after World War II. Economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis have noted that rigorous studies are inconclusive as to whether they actually offer any real benefits,
and some studies on keyboard layout have suggested that, for a skilled typist, layout is largely irrelevanteven randomized and alphabetical keyboards allow for similar typing speeds to QWERTY and Dvorak keyboardsand that switching costs always outweigh the benefits of further training with a keyboard layout a person has already learned.
The most widely used such alternative is the Dvorak keyboard layout; another alternative is Colemak, which is based partly on QWERTY and is claimed to be easier for an existing QWERTY typist to learn while offering several supposed optimisations.
Most modern computer operating systems support these and other alternative mappings with appropriate special mode settings, with some modern operating systems allowing the user to map their keyboard in any way they like, but few keyboards are made with keys labeled according to any other standard.
Comparison to other keyboard input systems
Comparisons have been made between Dvorak, Colemak, QWERTY, and other keyboard input systems, namely stenotype or its electronic implementations. However, stenotype is a fundamentally different system, which relies on phonetics and simultaneous key presses or Keyboard layout#Chorded keyboards and mobile devices, chords. Although Shorthand (or 'stenography') has long been known as a faster and more accurate typing system, adoption has been limited, possibly due to the historically high cost of equipment, steeper initial learning curve, and low awareness of the benefits within primary education and in the general public.
The first typed shorthand machines appeared around 1830, with English versions gaining popularity in the early 1900s. Modern electronic stenotype machines or programs produce output in written language, which provides an experience similar to other keyboard setups that immediately produce legible work.
Half QWERTY
![Nokia E55 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Nokia_E55_01.jpg)
A half QWERTY keyboard is a combination of an alpha-numeric keypad and a QWERTY keypad, designed for mobile phones.
In a half QWERTY keyboard, two characters share the same key, which reduces the number of keys and increases the surface area of each key, useful for mobile phones that have little space for keys.
It means that 'Q' and 'W' share the same key and the user must press the key once to type 'Q' and twice to type 'W'.
See also
*
AZERTY
AZERTY () is a specific keyboard layout, layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboard (computing), keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letter (alphabet), letters to appear on the fir ...
*
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 ...
*
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 tha ...
* JCUKEN
* Colemak Keyboard
*Dvorak keyboard layout
* KALQ keyboard split-screen touchscreen thumb-typing Android-only 2013 beta
* Keyboard monument
* Maltron keyboard
* Path dependence
* Repetitive strain injury
* Text entry interface
* Thumb keyboard
* Touch typing
* Velotype
* Virtual keyboard
* Arrow keys#Alternative cursor movement keys, WASD
References
Informational notes
Citations
External links
Article on QWERTY and Path Dependence from EH.NET's EncyclopediaQWERTY Keyboard in MobilesAndroid phones with QWERTY keyboards
{{DEFAULTSORT:Qwerty
1873 introductions
American inventions
Computer keyboard types
Latin-script keyboard layouts