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in the US ]] Vaio laptop]] QWERTY (pronounced ) is the most common modern-day Keyboard Layout on English-language Computer and Typewriter Keyboard s. It takes its name from the first six Letter s seen in the keyboard's top first row of letters. The QWERTY design was Patent ed by Christopher Sholes in 1867 and sold to Remington in 1873 , when it first appeared in Typewriter s. HISTORY AND PURPOSES 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. {Link without Title} 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 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 Hand s, 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; 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. {Link without Title} It is also helpful for those on a computer where the right hand is primarily used for the mouse leaving the left hand as the primary hand to type with. The first network email sent was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson to another computer in his office. The message read QWERTYUIOP - the top row of the keyboard {Link without Title} . QWERTY AND ACCENTS QWERTY is designed for English , a language without any Accents . 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 , however, there are many possibilities for typing Latin characters with accents. US-International Layout The US-International layout is a QWERTY layout, slightly modified for allowing an easy access to Latin Characters with accents or more generally Diacritic characters. The punctuation characters ' (simple Quote ), " (double quote]), ` (back quote), ^ ( Circumflex ) have a different behavior compared to the usual QWERTY layout because they are Dead Keys . The new user will be surprised when wishing to type one of the characters because nothing will be displayed on the Screen . Indeed, in order to type a Punctuation character, the user has to type first the punctuation key then the Space Bar . The advantage of this type of keyboard is that, being normalized, it resides on most of computer systems, and the user just has to tell the operating system to use it. Nothing has to be installed. While the US-International layout allows typing many accented characters, not all ASCII characters are necessarily available (for instance, the characters ª¯±·¸º), and many of them are available only in a convoluted manner. For instance, it is difficult to find an easy way to retrieve the Yen character (¥) or the ø. Another inconveniece of this layout is that even though it is claimed to be international, its limitation to the 8 bit ASCII character map (and not UNICODE ) makes it impossible to type correctly in certain languages like Romanian , or Turkish , which use letters like ş, ţ, ă, etc. The ASCII system also doesn't contain Mathematical Characters like ∀, ∃, ⇒, Greek or Cyrillic characters. Microsoft Windows: the ALT key On the Microsoft Windows Operating System , all characters can be reached via the ALT + See Alt Codes for more information. This system is standard on Windows , but not other operating systems. It does however require memorising 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. The system is also dependant on having a separate numeric keypad, and therefore requires the "Fn" key to be held down on most notebook computer keyboards. Microsoft Word The Microsoft Word designers made it possible for the user to access accented characters in a more intuitive way. Indeed, all characters with accent are available using CTRL + It is unknown why Microsoft didn't integrate a Keyboard Layout with this behavior - users can use this functionality in Word only, not even in other Microsoft Office programs. 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, - (hypen)'' may produce the Unicode character ē. The precise sequences available are dependent on system configuration. INTERNATIONAL VARIANTS Minor changes to the arrangement are made for other languages. Belgian and French 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 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 Diacritic s 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 . Please note that 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. Danish and Norwegian Danish and Norwegian layouts only switching Æ and Ø , 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 , Umlaut s 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. Hungarian Hungarian keyboards use a similar layout, where the home row is longer than usual; it consists of the keys ASDFGHJKLÉÁŰ, although the letter Ű is sometimes at the end of the number row. 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 , 2 for Č , 3 for Ę , 4 for Ė , 5 for Į , 6 for Š , 7 for Ų , 8 for Ū and = for Ž . Norwegian Norwegian keyboards inserts Å to the right of P , Ø to the right of L and Æ to the right of Ø , thus not changing the appearance of the rest of the keyboard. Portuguese 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 Key s 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 ) 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 typewriter 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 Keypoards As Well As F Keyboards in the market, the former is much more popular. ALTERNATIVES TO QWERTY |
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