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The 'AZERTY layout' is a keyboard layout used in France, Belgium and some other countries. It differs from the QWERTY layout as follows:

★ A and Q are swapped.

★ Z and W are swapped.

★ M is moved from the right of N to the right of L (where colon/semicolon is on a US keyboard).

★ The digits 0 to 9 are on the same keys, but to be typed the shift key must be pressed. The non-shifted keys are used for accented lowercase characters.

★ Many symbols are in different locations.
The French Windows AZERTY keyboard does not meet standards for the French language. The recommends the use of accented capitals, but there are no dedicated keys to produce À Ç É È, or French quotation marks «» and ‹› (this gap is filled by text editors that automatically transform "). Also, it has many symbols on the normal and shifted state that are rarely used (e.g. § µ ²), which could be transferred to the AltGr state. On a US keyboard, the key to the left of 1, a ` (grave accent), produces a ~ (tilde) when shifted, (a ¬ on UK keyboards), but on a Belgian AZERTY keyboard, this key produces superscripts ² and ³.
In Quebec, where the practice of initial capital accents is generally followed, more adequate, albeit QWERTY, keyboard layouts are normally used. See ''Keyboard layouts'' for details.
The Belgian AZERTY was developed from the French AZERTY and some adaptations were made in the 1980s. All letters are the same as on the French keyboard, but some signs (? ! @ - _ + = §) are in different positions.

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See also

External links

See also

★ QWERTY

★ Keyboard layout

External links

★ Quebec government policies for computer keyboards