The QWERTY keyboard layout used by
Windows in the
US
'QWERTY' keyboard on 2007
Sony Vaio laptop
'QWERTY' (pronounced ) is the most common modern-day
keyboard layout on
English-language computer and
typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six
letters seen in the keyboard's top first row of letters. The QWERTY design was
patented by
Christopher Sholes in
1867 and sold to
Remington in
1873, when it first appeared in
typewriters.
History and purposes
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.
[1] 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 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.
[1] 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.
[2]
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;
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.
[2] 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
[3].
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 +
combination. For example, ALT + 130 generates the "é" character.
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 + then , for instance:
★ é = CTRL + ' then e
★ à = CTRL + ` then a
★ ç = CTRL + , then c
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
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 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. 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, 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.
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
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.
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
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 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
Because modern keyboards do not suffer from the problems of older mechanical keyboards, the QWERTY layout's separation of frequently used letter pairs is no longer necessary. Several alternative keyboard layouts, such as Dvorak Simplified Keyboard arrangement (designed by Dr. August Dvorak and William Dealey and patented in 1936), have been designed to increase a typist's speed and comfort, largely by moving the most common letters to the home row and maximizing hand alternation. The effectiveness of these layouts is disputed. Some studies have shown that alternative methods are more efficient, but Dvorak and other alternative typists most often cite comfort as the greatest advantage.[4] QWERTY's inventor, Christopher Sholes, patented a key arrangement similar to Dvorak's, but it never became popular.
Some researchers, such as economists Stan Liebowitz of University of Texas at Dallas, Texas and Stephen E. Margolis of North Carolina State University, claim that QWERTY is really no less efficient than other layouts, however, their study has been disputed.[5][6] Some believe that there is evidence to support the claim that Dvorak is faster. The world record for typing speed was made on a Dvorak keyboard.[7] Opponents point out that August Dvorak stood to gain from the success of his layout, and that he may have perpetuated this "efficiency myth" to increase his financial gains. Other QWERTY advocates claim that for a QWERTY typist to switch to Dvorak or another layout requires more effort than initially learning to touch-type, because of having to retrain the fingers' muscle memory; however, the opposite claim is also made because the Dvorak layout is supposedly more intuitive.
A Norwegian Dvorak keyboard
Computer users also need to unlearn the habit of pressing key shortcuts, e.g.: Ctrl + C for copy, Ctrl + X for cut, Ctrl + V for paste, on Microsoft Windows). However, some programs and operating systems allow the use of alternate layouts combined with QWERTY shortcuts; for example, Apple's Mac OS X offers a "Dvorak-Qwerty" keyboard layout that temporarily reverts to Qwerty while the Command key is held down.
Opponents of alternative keyboard designs most often point to QWERTY's ubiquity as a deciding factor, because the costs incurred by using the supposedly inefficient layout are much less than those of retraining typists. It is not unusual to find Dvorak typists who also touch-type the QWERTY layout for convenience, since QWERTY dominates the keyboard market. The tension between the Dvorak efficiency and the QWERTY ubiquity illustrates the problem of collective switching costs, assuming QWERTY's relative inefficiency.
Besides the Dvorak layout, there are many other newer alternative keyboard layouts, but those layouts have not gained widespread use.
See also
★ Alternative layouts
★ Dvorak Simplified Keyboard
★ Keyboard layout
★ Maltron keyboard
★ Path dependence
★ Repetitive strain injury
★ Touch typing
★ Velotype
★ WASD
References
1. The Literary Piano Robert Schadewald
2. It has also been suggested the top row was designed to have all the letters for the word "typewriter" so that typewriter salesmen could "peck" the word "typewriter" more quickly and easily without appearing to have to "hunt" for the keys.[http://dvorak.i-rox.com/ [1]][http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi719.htm [2]]
External links
★ Article on QWERTY and Path Dependence from EH.NET's Encyclopedia
★ Dvorak vs QWERTY Tool A tool to compare the efficiency of Dvorak and QWERTY.
★ The Curse of Qwerty by Jared Diamond or here.
★ The Fable of the Keys Disputes ''The Curse of Qwerty''.
★ Article disputing the validity of ''The Fable of the Keys''
★ The QWERTY myth.
★ ''The QWERTY Connection'', historical information
★ Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard
★ Typewriter Words
★ "Why QWERTY was Invented"
★ Keyboard typing recommendation
★ Where Once was a Comma Designer Artemy Lebedev's take on keyboard layout and the history of QWERTY.
★ JLG Extended Keyboard Layout for US Freeware, QWERTY compliant keyboard layout + Unicode and accentuated characters.
★ Arabic Online Keyboard based on QWERTY(ISLAM-91)
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