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6 Non-QWERTY Keyboard Layouts: 1. Azerty
6 Non-QWERTY Keyboard Layouts: 1. Azerty
How did the keys on your keyboard wind up in the QWERTY configuration?
You can thank Christopher Latham Sholes. He was a typewriter inventor who
used a top row layout of letters eerily similar to today’s QWERTY set -up for
his Sholes & Gilden Typewriter. That design was sold to the Remington
Typewriter company in 1873, which tweaked the design slightly to one we
largely see today.
But not everyone uses QWERTY keyboards! Here are six alternative layouts.
1. AZERTY
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There are some quirky QWERTY layouts that use largely the same base as
Sholes’ original keyboard adapted by Remington, but switch a few keys.
AZERTY, used in French-speaking countries across Europe and Africa, is one
such version.
As its name suggests, it switches Q for A and W for Z in the top line. On the
right hand side of the second line of letters, the semi colon key is swapped for
the M key. In English-speaking western countries using the QWERTY layout,
the numbers row on the top of the keyboard are used predominately as numbers
(with symbols made by holding down the shift key), but in France the idea is
reversed: That’s primarily your accent row, while holding down shift and
hitting a key will give you a number.
2. QWERTZ
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3. Dvorak
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Though Dvorak may sound like another string of letters, it’s in fact the
surname of this keyboard layout’s inventor, August Dvorak. The inventor felt,
when he patented his design in 1936, that QWERTY was uneconomical and
uncomfortable—and therefore wasn’t the perfect layout. Dvorak believed that
his layout was more efficient, and studies seem to agree.
4. Colemak
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5. Maltron
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The Maltron keyboard may, at first, seem utterly daunting. Rather than a single
rectangular grouping of letter-based keys, Maltron produces two square sets of
letters, both of which flank a number pad in the middle. The left hand square
of letters has the unusual combination of ANISF as its home row, while the
right hand square’s home row is set out in the DTHOR combination.
6. JCUKEN
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