QWERTY

For the song by Linkin Park, see Qwerty (Linkin Park song)

The QWERTY keyboard layout used by Windows in the US

QWERTY (pronounced / kwərti/) 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 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873, when it first appeared in typewriters. The QWERTY keyboard is also a commonly used nickname to name the English language keyboard.

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. 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. 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.

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.

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; however, single-handed words such as stewardesses, lollipop and monopoly show flaws in the alternation.

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. [1] 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.

Alternative keyboard layouts

Other languages

Minor changes to the arrangement are made for other languages.

• 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 language; consequently, they are known as QWERTZ keyboards.
• The Czech keyboard exchanges 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. Upper case 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).
• A similar layout is used on Hungarian keyboards, 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).
• French and Belgian 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.
• 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". Computer uses QWERTY keyboard with "è" to the right of "P" and "ò to the right of "L". ";" key can be pressed using shift + comma (",").
• 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 ?, ¿, and ¡.
• Spanish keyboards add the "ñ/Ñ" character to the right of the L instead of the ";/:" character.
• Romanian keyboards have a QWERTZ layout, swapping "Y" with "Z". "ă" and "î" are added to the right of the letter "P", while "ș" and "ț" are added to the right of the letter "L". "â" relaces 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"-" is swapped with "/".
• 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.
• The Danish layout is like the Norwegian, only switching "Æ" and "Ø", and Swedish and Finnish have their letters "Ä" and "Ö" in those places.
• Some keyboards for Lithuania 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.
• The Icelandic layout adds "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.
• The Turkish layout adds "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 preceeding 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). However, Turkish QWERTY is more popular than Turkish F in computer market.

This French Matra Alice uses the AZERTY layout

'Dvorak' and other layouts

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 [2] have shown that alternative methods are more efficient, but Dvorak and other alternative typists most often cite comfort as the greatest advantage. 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). 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. 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 (for example: 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
• Keyboard layout
• Dvorak Simplified Keyboard
• Touch typing
• Velotype
• Maltron keyboard
• Repetitive strain injury
• Path dependence

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, QWERTY and Colemak.
• 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
• A study on the theoretical efficiency of keyboard layouts
• Typewriter Words
• "Why QWERTY was Invented"
• 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)