QWERTY

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the keyboard layout. For other uses, see QWERTY (disambiguation).

Geographic distribution of different keyboard layouts in Europe: QWERTY QWERTZ AZERTY National layouts (Turkish FGIOD, Latvian GJRMV, Lithuanian ERTY) Non-Latin scripts

A QWERTY keyboard on a laptop computer QWERTY /kwrti/ is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six keys appearing on the top left letter row of the keyboard and read from left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in 1873. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in use on electronic keyboards due to the network effect of a standard layout and a belief that alternatives fail to provide very significant advantages.[1] The use and adoption of the QWERTY keyboard is often viewed as one of the most important case studies in open standards because of the widespread, collective adoption and use of the product.[2]

Contents

1 History and purposes o 1.1 Differences from modern layout

o

1.1.1 Substituting characters 1.1.2 Combined characters

1.2 Contemporary alternatives

2 Properties 3 Computer keyboards 4 Diacritical marks and international variants

o o o

4.1 UK-Extended Layout 4.2 Other keys and characters 4.3 International variants

4.3.1 Canadian

4.3.1.1 Canadian Multilingual Standard 4.3.1.2 Quebec French

4.3.2 Czech (QWERTY) 4.3.3 Danish 4.3.4 Dutch (Netherlands) 4.3.5 Estonian 4.3.6 Faroese 4.3.7 Finnish multilingual 4.3.8 Icelandic 4.3.9 Irish 4.3.10 Italian 4.3.11 Latvian 4.3.12 Maltese 4.3.13 Norwegian

4.3.14 Persian (Farsi) 4.3.15 Polish 4.3.16 Portuguese

4.3.16.1 Brazil 4.3.16.2 Portugal

4.3.17 Romanian (in Romania and Moldova) 4.3.18 Slovak (QWERTY) 4.3.19 Spanish

4.3.19.1 Spain, a.k.a. Spanish (International sort) 4.3.19.2 Latin America

4.3.20 Swedish 4.3.21 Turkish (Q-keyboard) 4.3.22 United Kingdom

4.3.22.1 UK Apple keyboard 4.3.22.2 United Kingdom extended

4.3.23 United States

4.3.23.1 US-International 4.3.23.2 US-International in the Netherlands 4.3.23.3 Apple International English Keyboard

4.3.24 Vietnamese

5 Alternatives to QWERTY 6 Comparison to other keyboard input systems 7 Half QWERTY

o

7.1 Displaced QWERTY

8 See also 9 References 10 External links

History and purposes

Keys are arranged on diagonal columns, to give space for the levers. Main article: Sholes and Glidden typewriter Still used to this day, the QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Milwaukee. In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soul.[3] The first model constructed by Sholes used a piano-like keyboard with two rows of characters arranged alphabetically as follows:[3]
- 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

The construction of the "Type Writer" had two flaws that made the product susceptible to jams. Firstly, characters were mounted on metal arms or typebars, which would clash and jam if neighboring arms were pressed at the same time or in rapid succession.[4] Secondly, its printing point was located beneath the paper carriage, invisible to the operator, a so-called "up-stroke" design. Consequently, jams were especially serious, because the typist could only discover the mishap by raising the carriage to inspect what he had typed. The solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs (like "th" or "st") so that their typebars were not neighboring, avoiding jams. Contrary to popular belief,[5] the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down,[6] but rather to speed up typing by preventing jams.[4][7] (There is also evidence that, aside from the

issue of jamming, keys being further apart increases typing speed on its own, because it encourages alternation between the hands.[citation needed]) Almost every word in the English language contains at least one vowel, but on the QWERTY keyboard only the vowel "A" is located on the home row, which requires the typist's fingers to leave the home row for most words. 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 letter-pair frequency by educator Amos Densmore, brother of the financial backer James Densmore, is believed to have influenced the arrangement of letters, but was later called into question.[8] Others dispute that slowing down the typist was the purpose, suggesting instead that the letter arrangement evolved from telegraph operator's feedback.[9] In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the latter half of the alphabet, O to Z, right-toleft.[10] In April 1870 he arrived at a four-row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard, moving six vowels, A, E, I, O, U, and Y, to the upper row as follows:[11] 23456789AEI.?YUO, BCDFGHJKLM ZXWVTSRQPN In 1873 Sholes's backer, James Densmore, successfully sold the manufacturing rights for the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer to E. Remington and Sons. The keyboard layout was finalized within a few months by Remington's mechanics and was ultimately presented as follows:[12] 23456789-,