QWERTY

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For the Linkin Park song, see QWERTY (song).
A QWERTY keyboard layout commonly used by English speaking North Americans
A QWERTY keyboard layout commonly used by English speaking North Americans
A QWERTY keyboard
A QWERTY keyboard

QWERTY (pronounced /ˈkwɝti/) is the most common modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top first row of letters. The QWERTY design was patented [1] by Christopher Sholes in 1874[2] and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first appeared in typewriters.

Contents

History and purposes

A typewriter with the QWERTY layout
A typewriter with the QWERTY layout

The QWERTY keyboard layout was devised and created in the 1860s by the creator of the first modern typewriter, Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee. Originally, the characters on the typewriters he invented were arranged alphabetically, set on the end of a metal bar which struck the paper when its key was pressed. However, once an operator had learned to type at speed, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another, forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also frequently blotting the document.[3] A business associate of Sholes, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to speed up typing by preventing common pairs of typebars from striking the platen at the same time and sticking together. The effect that this rearrangement of letters had on maximum typing speed is a disputed issue. Some sources assert that the QWERTY layout was designed to slow down typing speed to further reduce jamming,[4] while other sources assert the rearrangement worked by separating common sequences of letters in English. Ostensibly, the hammers that were likely to be used in quick succession were less likely to interfere with each other.[citation needed]

The home row (ASDFGHJKL;) of the QWERTY layout is thought to be a remnant of the old alphabetical layout that QWERTY replaced. QWERTY also attempted to alternate keys between hands, allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes a key. This sped up both the original double-handed hunt-and-peck technique and the later touch typing technique.[citation needed]

An unfortunate consequence of the layout, for right-handed typists, is that many more words can be spelled using only the left 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. This is helpful for left-handed people.[5]

QWERTY and diacritical marks

QWERTY is designed for English, a language without any diacritical marks. More and more people have to work in countries where computers are sold with QWERTY keyboards, and consequently meet issues when having to type an accent. Until recently, no norm was defined for a standard QWERTY keyboard layout allowing the typing of accented characters, apart from the US-International layout.

Depending on the operating system and sometimes the application program being used there are many ways to generate Latin characters with accents, and special characters. In some cases a combination of keystrokes, some simultaneous and some sequential can be used; e.g., hold down the Alt key, press 1, 5, and 6, then release the Alt key to generate a character numbered 156 in some character set. Or the Control or Alt key can be used together with a letter.

Encodings which allow a standard US and UK keyboard to be used with few noticeable differences to the standard encoding, but with the capability to generate a fairly wide, though not universal, range of non-standard characters are available.

US-International Layout

The US-International layout is a QWERTY layout, slightly modified for allowing easy access to Latin characters with diacritical marks, including accents. The punctuation characters ' (apostrophe), " (double quote), ` (back quote), and ^ (circumflex) have a different behavior compared to the usual QWERTY layout because they are dead keys: when pressed, nothing happens, but the character generated by the next keypress is modified. To generate the character on one of these dead keys it must be followed by pressing the spacebar, or a key which does not generate an accented character. Most characters are generated in the same way as the usual US layout, making the layout suitable for use with standard keyboards.

UK-Extended Layout

Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and above provide the UK-Extended layout which behaves exactly the same as the standard UK layout for all the characters it can generate, but can additionally generate a number of diacritical marks. Not all combinations work on all keyboards.

  • acute accents (á) on a,e,i,o,u,w,y,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y are generated by pressing the AltGr key together with the letter, or AltGr and apostrophe, followed by the letter (see note below);
  • grave accents (à) on a,e,i,o,u,w,y,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y are generated by pressing the backquote (`), then the letter;
  • circumflex (â) on a,e,i,o,u,w,y,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y is generated by AltGr and 6, followed by the letter;
  • diaeresis (ä)on a,e,i,o,u,w,y,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y is generated by AltGr and 2, then the letter;
  • tilde (ã) on a,n,o,A,N,O is generated by AltGr and #, then the letter;
  • cedilla (ç) under c,C is generated by AltGr and the letter.

These combinations are designed to be easy to remember, as the circumflex accent is similar to a caret, printed above the 6 key; the diaeresis is similar to the double-quote (") above 2 on the UK keyboard; the tilde (~) is printed on the same key as the #.

UK-Extended does not cater for many languages written with Latin characters, including Romanian and Turkish, or any using different character sets such as Greek and Russian.

Notes:

  • The AltGr and letter method used for acutes and cedillas will not work for applications which assign short-cut menu functions to these key combinations. For acute accents the AltGr and apostrophe method should be used.
  • The need to depress three keys simultaneously (e.g. AltGr/Shift/c for Ç) contravenes international keyboard standards (ISO/IEC 9995).

Extended characters

Main article: Alt codes

On the Microsoft Windows and DOS operating systems, all characters can be reached via the ALT + <number> combination, typed on the numeric keypad. For example, ALT + 130 and ALT + 0233 generate the "é" character.

This system requires memorizing the character codes, use of Character Map, or having a table of the codes nearby. Moreover, a four-key combination can be time-consuming, especially when it is needed in order to access frequently used characters. Since the system is dependent on having a separate numeric keypad, it requires the "Fn" key to be held down on most notebooks.

Microsoft Word

The Microsoft Word and Windows Live Messenger designers made it possible for the user to access accented characters in a more intuitive way. All characters with accent are available using CTRL + <punctuation> then <letter>, for instance:

  • é = CTRL + ' then e
  • à = CTRL + ` then a
  • ç = CTRL + , then c

Microsoft did not make this behavior available in other Microsoft Office programs or the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Compose key

Systems with X11 generally have, at least as an option, a compose key which when pressed composes the next two (or more) keypresses into a single character. The keys are pressed in sequence; the compose key is not held down. For instance, the sequence Compose, a, ' (apostrophe) generally produces á; Compose, t, h generally produces þ; Compose, e, - (hyphen) may produce the Unicode character ē. The precise sequences available are dependent on system configuration.

Mac OS X uses a similar system, with the Option key and the key for the desired diacritical mark pressed simultaneously, followed by another key to add the base character.

International variants

Minor changes to the arrangement are made for other languages.

Belgian and French

This French Matra Alice uses the AZERTY layout
This French Matra Alice uses the AZERTY layout

Belgian and French keyboards interchange both Q and W with A and Z and move M to the right of L; they are known as AZERTY keyboards. However, the French Canadian layout is a QWERTY layout.

Czech

Czech keyboards use QWERTZ keyboards. They exchange the Z and Y like the German one, yet uses a "kroužek" u (ů) to the right of L and (ú) next to P. The row which is normally reserved for numerals in other layouts is used to produce the diacritics ě, š, č, ř, ž, ý, á, í, é. The shift key is used to create numerals in this system. Uppercase diacritics are found, using a word processor, by holding shift, keying the equals sign and the related letter. Thus shift + =, shift + Z gives a Ž.

Other punctuation marks and symbols also vary from the English version. There are also layout variants which are more or less close to the original US QWERTY layout; one of them puts Y and Z at their original positions, Czech - QWERTY.

Scandinavia

Danish and Norwegian layouts only switching Æ, Ø, and Å where Swedish and Finnish have their corresponding letters Ä and Ö.

Faroese

Faroese keyboards add Æ and Ø next to L, and Å and Ð next to P. Tilde, umlauts and circumflex are accessed by pressing Alt Gr + Ð, Å and Ø respectively.

German

German keyboards add an umlauted Ü to the right of P, with Ö and Ä to the right of L and interchange the Z and Y keys both because Z is a much more common letter than Y in German, the latter seldom appearing except in borrowed words and because T and Z often appear next to each other in the German; consequently, they are known as QWERTZ keyboards, and occasionally "kezboards".

The Swiss and the German keyboards are not similarly designed.

Hungarian

Hungarian keyboards change the Y and Z as the Czech do, also there is an insert at the end of the upper row, after P, namely the double-accented O ("Ő"), and the accented U ("Ú"). The home row is the same as the US-International but it is longer than usual: it consists of the keys ASDFGHJKL É Á Ű. Lastly, an accented I ("Í") is added at varying places, usually left of the Y (which is on the bottom row, see beginning of paragraph), shortening the left Shift key.

Icelandic

Icelandic layouts add Ð to the right of P, Æ to the right of L, Ö to the right of 0 in the top row and Þ to the rightmost place in the bottom row.

Italian

Italian typewriter keyboards, but not most computer keyboards, use a QZERTY layout where Z is swapped with W and M is at the right of "L". Computers use a QWERTY keyboard with è to the right of P and ò to the right of L. Semicolon (;) key can be pressed using shift + comma (,).

Lithuania

Lithuania keyboards use a layout known as ĄŽERTY, where Ą appears in place of Q above A, Ž in place of W above S, with Q and W being available either on the far right-hand side or by use of the Alt Gr key. Depending on the software used, the Lithuanian symbols can also be positioned in the place of digits: 1 for Ą, 2 for Č, 3 for Ę, 4 for Ė, 5 for Į, 6 for Š, 7 for Ų, 8 for Ū and = for Ž.

Portuguese

Portuguese keyboards maintain the QWERTY layout but add an extra key: the letter C with cedilla (Ç) after the L key. In this place, the Spanish version has the letter N with tilde (Ñ), the Ç, which is not used in Spanish, but is part of sibling languages like French, Portuguese and Catalan, which is placed at the rightmost position of the home line, beyond the diacritical dead keys and keys such as question mark (?), inverted question mark (¿) and inverted exclamation mark (¡).

Romanian

Romanian keyboards have a QWERTZ layout, swapping Y with Z. ă and î are added to the right of the letter P, while ş and ţ are added to the right of the letter L. â replaces the backslash character. Changes are also made to the upper number keys, the numbers remain the same, but some of the symbols are shuffled. The most notable change is that hyphen (-) is swapped with slash (/).

Spanish

Spanish keyboards add ñ and Ñ characters to the right of the L instead of the semicolon (;) and colon (:) characters.

Turkish

Turkish layouts add Ğ and Ü to the right of P, Ş and İ to the right of L, Ö and Ç to the right of M. Circumflex accent can be added by typing shift + 3 preceding the letter to which accent is added. There are no Turkish QWERTY typewriters mainly because it's less ergonomic for Turkish and Turkish F layout is a mandatory standard in typewriters.

As for the computer industry, while it is possible to find QWERTY keyboards as well as F keyboards in the market, the former is much more popular.

Alternatives to QWERTY

See also: Dvorak Simplified Keyboard and Keyboard layout

Several alternatives to QWERTY have been developed over the years, claimed by their designers and users to be more efficient, intuitive and ergonomic; however, none of them are in widespread use, and studies are inconclusive as to whether they actually offer any real benefits.[6] The most widely used such alternative is the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, which comes with all modern computer operating systems.

Trivia

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See also

References

  1. ^ Patent: 207,559 (US) issued August 27, 1878 to Christopher Latham Sholes
  2. ^ See "The Sholes Keyboard" at http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.maxmon.com/1867ad.htm.
  3. ^ The History of Qwerty
  4. ^ Schadewald, Robert. "The Literary Piano", Technology Illustrated, December, 1982 – January 1983. 
  5. ^ [1]
  6. ^ Stan Liebowitz & Stephen E Margolis, The Fable of the Keys

External links

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Keyboard layouts
QWERTY based
QWERTY  · AZERTY  · QWERTZ
Alternative layouts
Dvorak  · Maltron  · Svorak  · Plum
Non-Roman
For mobile devices
Chorded keyboards
Historical