Talk:QWERTY/Archive 1

Is it true?
The following para is stated in the article:

''It has often been noted that the word typewriter can be typed entirely using the top row of the QWERTY keyboard: it has been speculated that this may have been a factor in the choice of keys for ease of demonstration. However, it was not planned that way.''

How can we confirm that it was not planned that way? What I have heard and read so far, it clearly shows that QWERTY keyboard was designed to enable early salesmen to type 'typewriter' quickly to impress the potiental clients...


 * I'm getting rid of that last sentence as it is unproven and probably incorrect. I have seen a large number of sources that make the same claim; it could just be myth, but we definitely do not know for sure that "it was not planned that way." Mussavcom Nov 05 2005
 * that's silly. I'm not doubting it's a myth, or hell it might even be true, but why would all in the top row make it faster? If you know how to type it doesn't make much difference what row it's in... Oreo man 20:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
 * As far as "typewriter" being hidden in the first row, while I don't know about historical proof, strictly speaking mathematically, it is highly improbable that it was not put in the first row purposely. Given that there are 3 rows on the QWERTY layout, that means the probability of any one letter being on the first row is 10/26 (since there are 10 letters on the first row).  Given that the word "Typewriter" has 7 unique letters "typewri", this would mean that the probability of having all of those on the first row is (10/26)^7, or approximately 0.1%.  Given this low probability of it happening randomly, I am guessing it was purposeful. --Pordaria (talk) 17:38, 23 May 2008 (UTC)+
 * It's worse than that, because it's clearly grouped left to right. TY..P, (end) E, (back) WR..I, (end) T, (back) ER. Klalkity (talk) 23:43, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

was:

QWERTY is by no means the fastest key layout system -- a side effect of its design actually hindered typing speed -- but it remains in use on computers today simply because typists converting from typewriter to computer keyboard did not want to learn a new typing style to take advantage of keys that could not get stuck.

Very impressive table. :-) --Larry Sanger, but it crashes the Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition; I would suggest a gif file instead. -- Hannes Hirzel

It was actually easier to make the table than it would have been for me to make an image. Perhaps a screenshot of the table from a browser that works could be substituted? :) -Bryan Derksen

those claims, and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

That's not true. See http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/

I was taught many years ago that the keyboard was arranged the way it was in order to reduce the collisions of keys during typing. This, and the fact that most of the commonly used keys are not in the "home row" or necessate the extended use of the left hand, are designs to reduce the speed to that of the machine. -- mike dill

Please keep this text factually accurate. Any claim that Sholes intended to slow down typists is false. The second paragraph's claim that the arrangement helped him avoid stuck hammers is true. --LDC

I think the fable of the keys may be a bad link to have. The article was written by economists, with the aim of proving that capitalism does not leave good alternatives behind, and its data is massaged to that end. If anything we could link to a wiki page explaining with NeutralPointOfView that the study is controversial. As it stands, it's kind of like an article about biology linking to articles by Popper and Kuhn.

The claim that other layouts produce faster typing speeds is vague. Today most references give that the QWERTY layout was developed to stop collisions, not to slow the typing speed artificially. There is a good discussion about typewriter design in Donald Norman's "The Psychology of Everyday Things" usability design book. The previous assumption that the layout was constructed to avoid collisions is also not really backed up, and generally there is no consensus. For example, note that the word "typewriter" is made up of letters in the first row only, and the first devices were sold - first of their kind - as "typewriter"s. -sc.

Younger people may not have seen a mechanical typewriter with the hammers that swing towards the paper. IBM's interchangable ball shaped type heads for electrical typewriters and Computer printers are the reasons why some people don't even know what you meant by key collisions. Perhaps older folks can add some explanation in the article. Do people still remember those days when a carriage return was a lever?

Request for more information: "Dvorak" and "Sholes" are both referred to by their last names only, as people. The article should at least mention their full name and who they are before it starts referring to them this way. I think Dvorak is Charles Dvorak, but I've never heard of Sholes? Wesley

The Sholes in the article is Christopher Sholes, mentioned in the top paragraph, and the Dvorak is Dr. August Dvorak. It might be a good idea to slip August Dvorak's name into the paragraph on the topic, so people don't think it's talking about the composer. --AaronW 01:37, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I learned typing in a few years. But in a Few months i typed as fast on Dvorak than on my other keyboard!

As any kid who's played with an old fashioned typewriter knows, the way to clog the hammers is to press two keys that are next each other. Not because one can press them faster, but because they share the same area for a larger part of the distance. I believe this is why putting much used keys far appart helps, not because it makes you type slower. KNaranek 20:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I think that that makes far more sense. I think it's a myth that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to make you type slower. It is designed so that the keys do not get clogged, this is achieved by placing the most common letters as far apart as possible. I'm putting a citation needed stamp next to the statement that the design was to slow you down. Can someone please look into it?? 81.107.221.249 21:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

But the most common letters are NOT placed far apart! ES, ED and ER are very common combinations, and are right next to each other! Andrew Craig

Great!LemonLion 23:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have edited the text to correct this misinterpretation, and added a citation. OK? Snalwibma 23:56, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

dvorak comparison
"tests showing little significant performance difference between those who first learned to type on QWERTY and those who first learned to type on Dvorak."

cite? what tests? conducted by whom? when? mnemonic 05:28, 2004 Jun 20 (UTC)

"Alternated keys"
This article claims that the QWERTY keyboard "also alternated keys between hands, allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes a key." I have no idea what this means - I can see many words which can't be typed simply by alternating hands, unless the typist is supposed to make an effort to alternate hands? Some clarification of this point would be useful, or else remove it. Also, I feel there needs to be some mention (here and in Typewriter) of the claim that QWERTY was designed to slow down typists so as not to jam the typewriter - even if the claim is false, some mention needs to be made, because the claim is made often. - Brian Kendig 14:06, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * To the best of my knowledge (there is some debate about this), QWERTY wasn't designed so much to make you type slower, as to put letters that are typed rapidly in succession, on opposite sides, effectively slowing you down. -- Rmrfstar 21:08, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

POV
I'm adding a 'neutrality disputed' boilerplate to the top of this page, because the second half of the article is largely an attack on the Dvorak system, which is totally out of place and POV. I'll be editing to try and get it NPOV, but I use Dvorak myself, so I may not be the best candidate. If anyone has any issues or disputes, take it up here or on my talk page. Matthewcieplak 06:02, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I think it's better now; let me know if you have disputes I'd want to know about. Matthewcieplak 06:43, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Need reference
I just fixed a spelling error on this page and I was wondering if this line is true.
 * The word QWERTY was, coincedentially, the first message ever sent by e-mail.

Reference? --Chill Pill Bill 01:37, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I can't find any references, but I've heard it before. -- Rmrfstar 21:06, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds possible... Its like the easiest thing to spell on the keyboard. as simple as pushing the first five buttons.-Darkmewham
 * It goes without saying that if it merely sounds plausible that it should not appear as a statement of fact. -Thomas G. Marshall
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/dot_life/1586229.stm ''the text of the first message has been lost. Mr Tomlinson sent this historic message to himself from one machine to another sometime in October 1971. He said the text of this first message was "completely forgettable" but suspects it said something like 'qwertyuiop' or 'testing 1-2-3'.

Stewardesses & Lollipop
I'm quoting:


 * 1) Sweaterdresses is the Longest word in English that can be typed with only the left hand using the conventional method of typing.(Thanks to Matt Freedman)
 * 2) Conversely using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is Lollipop.

Why is the "longest sentence with one hand" claim unverifiable? Take a good wordlist, have a program filters all the words that can be typed with one hand, and have another program generate all the possible combinations. The longest one that makes sense in English is it. Using a (spell-checker's, possibly) wordlist that also lists grammatical classes for every word, the program could even possibly filter out those phrases that definitely make no grammatical sense at all. LjL 14:59, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I just mean it's fully possible to type any word with your right hand only if you go hunt and pecking instead of using touch. It didn't say anything about that. :\ Yes, most people find this obvious, but i think it deserves a notion. Again, sorry for my bad explaining skills. --BodyTag 20:28, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I mentioned the statistics were for conventional hand placement only. If you read the article on the Longest word in English, you will realize much debate there is over what constitutes a word. See the link, "Typewriter Words" at the bottom for a more thorough discussion of the topic. -- Rmrfstar 21:03, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What side of the keyboard does B lie on? If you type it left-handed (like I do) you can get the lovely word "devertebrated". Shen 13:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

protereotype?
The page states that protereotype has eleven letters, but it actually has twelve. I've seen 'proterotype' listed elsewhere, but I can't find any use of these words other than in reference to longest word typeable on one row of the keyboard. The OED doesn't contain either word. Perhaps we should remove this from the list.

US/UK differences
I'm sure this is far too minor a point to go in the article, but the most obvious thing I notice when using a US keyboard is that UK and US keyboards have the " and @ symbols reversed; on every British keyboard I've ever used, the double quote is [Shift]-2 while the at symbol is [Shift]-single quote. We also have three, not two, keys between L and [Return]; the third has the hash sign (#) and the tilde. In Windows at least, that odd key at top left where US keyboards have the tilde has three symbols: unshifted it produces `, with [Shift] it gives ¬ and with AltGr you get ¦. [Shift]-3 on a UK keyboard is the pound sign (£); note that the hash and pound signs are totally different things to we Brits! Finally, [AltGr]-4 gives €, the euro symbol. Loganberry (Talk) 01:20, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

what the heck!
why when i write qwerty in the search engine i get pictures of naked young girls???

Because

1. It is the easiest thing to type... RIght? 2. Qwerty is a name... SOrta. *Refers to poem I made up whenn I was 8* 3. People know you will search qwerty

24.251.232.216 02:37, 24 February 2006 (UTC)Darkmewham

You must tell me what search engine! So that I do not also make the same mistake...--24.210.178.8 02:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Needs major revision
I'm considering reworking this article.

It contains very little factual information about QWERTY itself, other than the first paragraph and the first two sentences of "Purpose."

"QWERTY also attempted to alternate keys between hands, allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes home a key. This sped up both the original double-handed hunt-and-peck technique and the later touch typing technique...."

Entirely false.

Isblueacolor 01:22, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Isblueacolor is putting it mildly. This article needs to be gutted. Trivia? Pornographic References? Hummm..would you see that sort of stuff in Encyclopedia Britannica? Just the facts please.

Look the the Dvorak Keyboard article. It has more actual information about QWERTY than this article.

66.74.234.167 04:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

New facts
In his book Guns, Germs and Steel (p. 418 of the paperback edition), Jared Diamond adds some interesting details to the QWERTY story that I haven't heard elsewhere. He mentions "a widely publicized typing contest in 1888" in which a QWERTY user "thrashed" a non-QWERTY user. Diamond says the contest involved two students of "a certain Ms. Longley who founded the Shorthand and Typewriter Institute in Cincinnati." I'd like to know more about this. Diamond doesn't give any references.

67.100.109.22 14:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC) Cullen Schaffer

Chinese
I've always been curious about Chinese keyboards and how they might work. Are there any articles here on Wikipedia? Maybe they should be mentioned?

Picture
Why is there a picture of a AZERTY keyboard? Shouldn't an QWERTY keyboard be more appropriate?


 * More troublesome is the picture at the top, which is captioned 'The QWERTY keyboard layout used for Windows in the US'. While quite probably the most common layout, overall, there is a minor QWERTY variant which is reasonably common also.  The differences are, overall, few and minor.  The return key is only a single row tall, with the \| key moved into the spot formerly occupied by the top section of the return, and the backspace expanded into a much wider key, occupying the space where \| was.  I'll freely admit, I'm fairly picky about only getting keyboards following that design, and the one pictured seems from my own experience to be slightly more widely used, though both are common.  My first computer I really used had a keyboard with that layout, and as I turned into a gamer, I got used to it.  To this day its still important to me, as I'm one of the probably very few gamers that still prefers the arrow keys over WSAD, and this layout gives me more usable keys near the arrows.  However, I also find the backspace and return keys easier to use with this layout as well(Return is easier to press down when it covers less real estate, and backspace is easier to hit, being wider).  In addition, I've seen many other, much rarer alternate layouts, mostly proprietary versions(including one featuring a second backspace occupying about half the spacebar's normal space.  That one was just OBNOXIOUS.)  -Graptor 66.161.206.252 10:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Purpose Section and Alternative Layout section
What does purpose mean?!?! What does alternative layout mean?!?!

therefore, why does this article appear to have alternative layouts in the purpose section?

I don't know who did it, but i don't understand why that was placed there.

Please can someone sort it out, or tell me why it was put there

Thanks Stwalkerster 12:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

sloppy + meaningless
The average person is expected to type 30-40 words per minute using the touch typing technique on a QWERTY keyboard. 40-50 words per minute is considered good, today's average has been clocked at over 90 words per minute.

What? 87.113.27.246 22:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I HIGHLY doubt such a claim. If you include users who average about 5wpm 90wpm is a pipe dream.--24.210.178.8 02:12, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Absurd statement
The article reads "single-handed words such as stewardesses, lollipop and monopoly show flaws in the alternation." Um, no. Single-handed words don't show "flaws in the alternation". They show flaws in the unreasonable expectation that alternation will speed up the typing of all words. This is quite different from the current wording, which shows flaws in the thinking.Daqu 16:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hand alternation speeding things up slightly does seem slightly logical, though I suspect the overall increase at average typing speeds is extremely marginal at best. From what I've read, touch typing hadn't been developed when QWERTY was developed anyway, and being able to alternate hands doesn't help speed any when you don't already know where the keys are.  As some have stated, its probably likely that the only attempts at 'alternation' were to get commonly used combinations away from each other, to keep the typewriter from jamming.  I've played with an old one as a kid, and pressing too many keys too fast too close together would jam it every time, and require you to stop and unstick the bars before continuing.  However, my personal thought would be that the 'absurd thinking' would be that it is POSSIBLE to create a layout where there wouldn't be at least a few single-handed words.  The diversity of the language is great, and compared to the number of words and possible letter combinations available, and with the other design necessities factored in, the number of *effective* layouts is fairly limited(IE: Layouts that put uncommon letters on the home row are most likely fairly ineffective).  There being a few one-handed words is to be expected of any realistic layout.  -Graptor 66.161.206.252 10:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This statement has always bothered me. I'm glad to see a discussion regarding it has already been started.  Graptor is bang on, but the statement has yet to be deleted.  Since there were no objections to this issue in half a year, I will remove the statement - the article will be better for it. -dmswart 16:57, 28 August 2007

Is this true?
"QWERTY is the most common password on the internet." I think we need some citation for this claim... Saosinnn 21:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think 'chocolate' or '1234' might be contenders for that title. Would an entry on common passwords be relevant to WikiWorld? After all, the reflect a culture, if not a demographic - espcially with regard to 'chocolate'! --TresRoque 21:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

That QWERTY is the computer from the veggie tales series haha yes it is Acdcfanactic727 16:55, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Czech keyboard
I've attempted to clarify the differences between the English and Czech keyboards. See this:


 * 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 English numerals (from 2-0) 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.

The same system is probably used for Slovak, though I expect it to be simpler, as they have a couple of variations.

Czech does NOT use an umlaut, and you might upset a lot of people by saying it does! --TresRoque 21:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

80.169.58.26 (talk) 10:43, 3 January 2008 (UTC) Robajz

Hi, can we get some more information here about the "Czech (QWERTY)" layout as seen in Microsoft Windows products? I only found a good information about it in a commercial catalogue: http://www.trantor.fi/AC_Czech_keyboard_overlay_sticker.htm There is also some interactive page about it on MS's website: https://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/keyboards/kbdcz1.htm It should be the very same layout you can setup in alternative operating systems like Linux... It is very handy for IT professionals as it offers all characters needed without switching the layouts. I'd be happy to re-draw the picture...

Alternative keyboard layouts
I'm not sure whether the "Alternative keyboard layouts" section is a good idea at all (there is the keyboard layout article after all), but the section about the Dvorak layout should definitely go away (there is a full article Dvorak Simplified Keyboard already). Comments? -- Felix Wiemann 15:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think it should be removed entirely but it could be reduced to a single short paragraph. The subject is adequately covered in other articles such as the Dvorak article and Keyboard layout -- in the context of this article it's straying from the topic a bit. Vquex (talk) 21:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

20070222 Typing Speed ;; serious NPOV problems
Regarding the issue of QWERTY and maximum typing speed, the article stated as fact that the re-arrangement of letters did not negatively influence typing speed, and supported that assertion with a cite to the "PathDepend" reference included in the article. Nevertheless, the cited reference clearly indicates that the issue of typing speed is subject to dispute, and it goes on to state that the alternate view is actually a more widely-promoted viewpoint. Moreover, the "PathDepend" reference contains no substantiation regarding the statistical frequency of letter-pairs in the English language, and yet the article presented that statistical claim as undisputed fact.

Since it is not appropriate to represent legitimately disputed issues as resolved facts, nor is it appropriate to entirely omit major alternative verifiable viewpoints relevant to this article, the article has been modified to address these problems. Please comment here if you have additional thoughts or concerns regarding this change. Thanks! dr.ef.tymac 16:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I Would ass that the statistical evidence points exactly to opposite direction: that QWERT was invented to slow the typing speed down.

This view is taken by Evans and Wurster, from the Boston Consulting Group, in their Harvard Business School book "Blown to Bits", when and where they address the standards issue.

Either way, what really matters is that there would have been not many more complicated dispositions available. Notwithstanding, people quickly adjusted to this layout, and thus QWERT became a standard. The definition of a standard is "good enough", not good, and much less the optimal. QWERT is a case in point.

Trivia
I removed the trivia section since most of it was OR ("QWERTY can be used as internet slang for pornography web searching") and notability-free "pop culture" references (the naming of characters in a "popular" web comic that doesn't even have its own Wikipedia entry) I moved the one salvageable thing, the urban legend about "typewriter", into the History section although it still needs a citation. Krimpet 18:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Follow-up: Added links, one is a university web page, but the other is from a potentially "partisan" resource on dvorak, better cites may be called for. The underlying claim itself, however, is a widespread and disputed view, so inclusion does seem appropriate. dr.ef.tymac 22:29, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Update: Officially declared Krimpet a big meanie. 200.104.66.45 16:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Objection: Wikipedia is the gauge for all that matters in the universe. If something is not already mentioned in it, then something may not be mentioned in it.  Additionally, 200.104.66.45, please respect the "no personal attacks" rule.  You skank. Volcabbage 17:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Objection to the objection: No personal attack here. Krimpet being a big meanie is an indisputable fact, since it appears in Wikipedia. 200.104.66.45 22:55, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Objection to the objection to the objection: You're supposed to say "overruled." dr.ef.tymac 02:06, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Dvorak content
Given that this is an article on QWERTY and not keyboard layouts in general, the section on Dvorak and other alternative layouts seems out of place. I wouldn't expect more than a sentence and a link to other pages... Miken32 19:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

porn?
Maybe the claim that "qwerty" is a code word for looking for porn in the Internet could be included? Couldn't find reputable sources, only the definition in the Urban Dictionary: 4. "QWERTY is a secret code word used by pedofiles and porn junkies. It is added to the end of file names as a method to return more porn results when using file sharing programs such as WINMX. Also used to disguise illegal child porn files."

These stats seem to support that:

Table 6. Top 15 queries in the Gnutella network (2004).

Rank	Query

1	divx 2	qwerty jpg 3	porn 4	eminem 5	techno mp3

Sai Ho Kwok 1, Christopher C. Yang. "Searching the peer-to-peer networks: The community and their queries," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Volume 55, Issue 9, Pages 783-793, 2004.

Since it was supposed to be "secret code", it may have died down since 2004, though. 67.68.247.39 13:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The fact that I can add an entry for Wikipedia stating that it is a code word for "nuclear warheads" should quite disprove the reliability of Urban Dictionary for anything.  Zchris87v  05:12, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Spanish Variations
There are several Spanish layouts for the Qwerty keybord, specially afecting the position of the tilde " ´ " and other spanish caracters.

Would be great if someone can add more variations.

Reverted to revision 142485806
I've just reverted this article to the revision of 16:47, 4 July 2007 (UTC); there has been an enormous amount of vandalism (in consecutive edits) and concordant vandal-fighting over the past week, resulting in most of the article detail being removed (it ended up being a stub with the Alternative Keyboard Layouts section; the article had more information on Dvorak than on QWERTY!). All should now be fixed with this revert. If further vandalism occurs, please revert back to this revision in cases of consecutive vandal edits. &mdash; digital eon  &bull; talk @ 17:07, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Caption under keyboard layout image
It doesn't really need to say "used by Windows" Nylex 07:12, 2 September 2007 (UTC).

DVORAK claims
The person claiming that the study is wrong has no credentials, nor did the other site; they don't seem like reliable sources. Is there a reliable source that can dispute the QWERTY DVORAK speed study? It seems to me that DVORAK advocates have vested interest in it, but none of them seem to have credentials. Titanium Dragon 20:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Claims about MS Windows
It seems to be incorrect that the ALT function is a MS Windows only feature?

It has been in use in all of Microsoft OSses including DOS and OS/2...

Or am I wrong? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.197.202.244 (talk) 20:22, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Footnote 3
The information in the article preceding footnote #3, referring to the first network e-mail, is questionable. The author of the cited article says it "may have been" QWERTYUIOP... also, the information in the footnote section by #3 has nothing to do with this e-mail. -- DataNoh 20:42, 24 October 2007 (UTC) GOATS SMELL FUNNY!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fletcher521 (talk • contribs) 03:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Mac bias?

 * 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. Mac OS X and other operating systems have full accent functionality- not program limited ones.


 * Is it really a difference maker that Mac OS X has this functionality? It seems like "other operating systems" is sufficient, as if it really is popular with many other OS's, is there any real need to mention Mac? Plus, OS X is an operating system, and Microsoft Word is a program. There's quite a difference. Perhaps if iTunes doesn't have an integrated keyboard layout, that may be worth mention?  Zchris87v  05:12, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

You are right. Also CTRL + some character that is not always assigned a separate key is not necessarily a working idea, since for example AltGr + 8 is [ for me, then CTRL + [ is same as CTRL + 8 (or is it?). If I had British physical keyboard and local key bindings, it would be pretty difficult to figure out what key if any is the [ in CTRL + [. This is not much a problem in United States, United Kingdom or Australia, but it is for pretty much everybody else.

Tilde is Alt Gr + ¨, then space, four tildes mean 12 strokes 193.110.108.67 (talk) 14:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Does anyone else think it's worth mentioning how long the "Option + [ accent ] + [ character ]" feature has actually been available on Macs? I'm no expert, but I know I could use it in OS 8 and I'm pretty sure it was part of 7.6. Hmm... researching a little bit, http://lowendmac.com/conachey/05/macintosh-system-1.html seems to imply that it's been there since the beginning! (Key Caps, at least in later versions, demonstrated visually what pressing certain key combinations would produce, but didn't actually *do* anything that you couldn't do in SimpleText.) trepto (talk) 22:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC) :
 * ... and yes, I may be a bit biased. trepto (talk) 22:36, 4 March 2009 (UTC) ::

typo
memorizing is misspelled in the section about the ALT key. The spelling of speed is wrong in the first paragraph. 122.163.239.226 09:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Portuguese
The word in Portuguese is cedilha, not cedilla.

Belgian
There is no such thing as the "Belgian Language." The official languages of Belgium are French and Flemish.

Chinese pinyin
I think there should be a snip of this article regarding how china actually uses the qwerty keyboard, but has a program that converts the chinese pinyin (拼音) (which is just romanization of the sounds the chinese characters make) into chinese. I myself don't know enough to actually DO the article, but there should be something for the asian languages. as for how hindi, arabic, farci, urdu, etc.. and other non-roman languages besides chinese work, i have no idea. I would really like to know that though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JamesShijie (talk • contribs) 01:38, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

QWERTY
This sections seems a tad POV. I happen to agree being a Mac fan myself but it did seem a little out of place. Thoughts? Olleicua 02:53, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm rather sure the image of the so called norwegian keaboard is a FAKE
I think this is a fake: the blue numbers doesn't fit! Please compare the little blue numbers with this no-fake also-acer keyboard! So this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Keyboard-Dvorak-norwegian.JPG is a fake!

--212.23.126.12 19:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Took me about 3 minutes to notice what you were talking about, you mean the blue ten-key numbers mixed in among the letters, I was looking at the blue numbers on the number row. The keyboard is no more "fake" than the one I use. The user popped the keys off a QWERTY keyboard and rearranged them in DVORAK style. I can testify that a cheap Dynex keyboard from Best Buy is a great candidate for popping off keys and rearranging them, the only real problem is there are then no bumps for the middle fingers on home row, easily fixable if you really need them. DavesPlanet (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Norwegian twice
Gotta wonder why Norwegian shows up twice under International variants. Someone make a managerial decision. TorbenFrost (talk) 14:49, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I've removed the duplicate Norwegian entry. -- JediLofty User ¦ Talk 09:45, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Redirect - the last time
Why does the last time redirect to here. I was trying to find the rolling stones song and cannot see why it would direct to a keyboard layout. can someone with a little more expertise sort it out. thanks. BubbleChog (talk) 14:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Qwerty alphabet
If the alphabet were to be rearranged into the order of the QWERTY keyboard and a new dictionary established in that order, what would he first and last words in the new dictionary be? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tblunn (talk • contribs) 23:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Who cares? — INTRIGUE B LUE (talk&#124;contribs) 22:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Same material in keyboard layout
This article and the article about keyboard layout should be reviewed together. It is no point explaining that Scandinavian keyboard has extra letters äöå, if the other article has even a nice picture about the complete keyboard layout. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.110.108.67 (talk) 14:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah of patent for qwerty?
"The QWERTY design was patented [1] by Christopher Sholes in 1874[2]" but [1] refers to an 1878 patent! General consensus elsewhere suggests 1878 rather than 1874 is correct year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.11.146.116 (talk) 13:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Just checked Google and USPTO. Patent 207559 is dated August 27 1878 and was filed March 8 1875. "The QWERTY keyboard was developed in 1867 by Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule for the first known practical typewriter" -Patent 5836700 (filed in 1986) --79.68.201.12 (talk) 23:46, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Scandinavian
The below section says “Faroese keyboards add Æ and Ø next to L, and Å and Ð next to P.“ This is the way it is done on Norwegian and Danish keyboards on compact keyboards (notebook computers) too! (Except that tilde replaces Ð.) —anonymous Norwegian contributor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.90.54.11 (talk) 19:03, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Alternatives
Per the discussions above, I've cropped back this section to a one-paragraph summary since an extensive treatment of Dvorak and other layouts in an article about QWERTY is straying off-topic a bit. I've also added a "see also" note above the section referring readers to the separate articles on Dvorak and Keyboard layout. Vquex (talk) 21:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The sentence "The most widely used such alternative is the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, which comes with all modern computer operating systems." is misleading. While modern computer operating systems support the Dvorak keyboard, I am fairly certain that they don't come with one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.135.113.3 (talk) 20:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Num Lock Mode
Someopne should really put that you can only type the accents after making sure the keyboard is in num lock mode and then holding ALT and typing the numbers in the num lock keypad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.23.193.233 (talk • contribs) 03:15, 16 August 2008

Dubious UK-extended claim

 * "The need to depress three keys simultaneously (e.g. AltGr/Shift/c for Ç) contravenes international keyboard standards (ISO/IEC 9995)."

Pressing AltGr+c when caps lock is on produces a Ç, so there is certainly no 'need' to depress three keys at once. As this is not referenced, I am removing this from the article. Kyle McInnes (talk) 19:33, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * On several computers Ive used, pressing those keys produces a ©. Ydale38 (talk) 20:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Reverted Article
For some reason, a large part of the article was deleted and replaced with a few gibberish characters, and, oddly, none of the last several revisions fixed it. It should be back to normal now. Eebster the Great (talk) 00:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

US-International Layout

For whatever reason the text here contains the following words (pls. note the bold text):

The US-International layout is a QWERTY layout, slightly modified for allowing easy access to Latin characters with diacritical marks, including accents.if your reading this your a gay boy/lesbo who has gang bangs The punctuation characters ´ (apostrophe), “ (double quote), ` (back quote), and ^ (circumflex) have a different behavior compared to the usual US QWERTY layout because they are dead keys: when pressed, nothing happens, but the character generated by the next keypress is modified. [...]

I am pretty sure that this does not belong in there. However, I am not sure how to edit this article either as I am not familiar with editing wikipedia articles at all. Maybe one of you wikipedia regular users can take care of that, thanks. 85.177.98.229 (talk) 18:55, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Left and right quotation marks?
Maybe under "diacriticals"? should it be mentioned how to get left quotation marks and right quotation marks (both single and double)? For example recent MS Word versions are "smart" enough to automatically transform the neutral-direction typewriter keyboard single and double quotes, according to context; and the only common error I have found involves contractions that start with an apostrophe, like: 'tis which ends up as a left quote (whereas a right quote is typographically indistinguishable from an apostrophe, I think). 71.131.197.42 (talk) 19:38, 4 July 2009 (UTC)LPMeissner 4 Jul 2009

QWERTY Spelling
May I know why someone is documenting how to spell a word that is on the screen? (first line). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.248.196.180 (talk) 06:25, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Only five English words?
"...there are only 5 English words that can be spelled using just the letters in the top row: perpetuity, prerequire, proprietor, repertoire, and typewriter." Oh, yeah! Obviously tree, pet, pretty, propriety, require, type, writer (and hundreds more) aren't English words then, right?

This only proves my theory: Wikipedia editors are morons. And they protect pages so that their moronic articles stay untouched... in perpetuity.

Mmmmmm no. It says 5 Ten letter words. Who's the moron now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.228.218.113 (talk) 16:08, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Excellent Resource
I'm surprised the following article has not been referenced:

QWERTY keyboard: A review. Noyes, J INT. J. MAN-MACH. STUD. Vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 265-281. 1983

Abstract: The standard typewriter keyboard (nicknamed QWERTY) was designed over a century ago. During this time, QWERTY has become a controversial issue, because many individuals feel that the sequential keyboard market is being monopolized by a sub-optimum layout. Despite these feelings, in 1971 the International Standards Organization recognized QWERTY as the standard keyboard, and a year later Alden, Daniels & Kanarick (1972) concluded that QWERTY was "the de facto standard layout for communications and computer interface keyboards". This article reviews the origins of the QWERTY keyboard, and other sequential keyboards which have been developed since 1909. The reasoning behind the design of these other keyboards and the subsequent impact they made on the keyboard world are discussed. Various explanations are suggested as to why this previous research has not had any effect on the design of the QWERTY keyboard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.63.4.75 (talk) 17:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Good resource indeed. Here is another reference that future editors might want to look at:

Paul A. David. 1997. Path Dependence and the Quest for Historical Economics: One More chorus of Ballad of QWERTY. Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford http://ideas.repec.org/p/nuf/esohwp/_020.html (Accessed December 8, 2009).

This ref is of relevance in particular with regard to the debate on efficiency in the final section and the suggestion that the work of Liebowitz and Margolis [2] represents more rigorous research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.104.38.5 (talk) 16:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

In the end of the first paragraph, there is an unsupported claim as to the rational for a non-optimized standardization, Economic efficiency has been idealized and imagined to exist where good the economic reality does not support it being the rational; there for economically optimized selection of key board lay out. technological, behavioral lock-in and technological pathway dependency are similar effects to the reference of network theory. I would like to see this expanded upon perhaps in a subjection and remove the unsupported inference to efficiency. Tests have been done to show typing speed which is a principle indicator of keyboard output. There is a contradiction in the reasoning that is applied and the reference to network theory. It seems like network theory is the social manifestation of the phenomena. I very much like this quote from David (1985) "I believe there are many more QWERTY worlds lying out there in the past, at the very edges of the modern economic analyst's tidy universe; worlds we do not yet fully perceive or understand, but whose influence1 like that of dark stars, extends nonetheless to shape the visible orbits of our contemporary economic affairs. Most of the time I feel sure that the absorbing delights and quiet terrors of exploring QWERTY worlds will suffice to draw adventurous economists into the systematic study of essentially historical dy­namic processes, and so will seduce them into the ways of economic history, and a. better grasp of their subject." Alaskanwarrior (talk) 03:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alaskanwarrior (talk • contribs) 03:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Keyboard diagram
I'm of the DIY school of Wikipedia editing, but I'm not sure how to go about this. Not everyone has the QWERTY layout printed on their keyboard keycaps. Shouldn't the article include a diagram of the keyboard layout, like most other articles? — INTRIGUE B LUE (talk&#124;contribs) 22:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There is one in the Computer keyboards section. I don't know why it's so tiny as to be unreadable, though. Shreevatsa (talk) 23:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

"h" looks like "n," "j" like "i," etc.
Was the QWERTY keyboard arranged so that letters that looked like each other were closer together?

B is like H, N is kind of like H, R is maybe a little like F, and E like R. But probably it's just coicindence and the ones that don't look like each other are more frequently together than those that do.

By the way, IE8 CANNOT handle a lot of text on screen. Right now in this discussion/edit box, it's typing really, really slow. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.28.223 (talk) 07:00, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * No. As the article states, the QWERTY keyboard layout was designed to prevent mechanical keys from jamming.  That meant using a configuration that slowed typists down somewhat, since typing too fast was one of the things that caused jamming.  As the article notes, the mechanical jamming issues have been otherwise resolved, and QWERTY is merely a legacy of the early days of the typewriter.  There have been many keyboard designs which are demonstrated to be faster than QWERTY, because the other keyboard designs are optimized purely for human speed without regard to the mechanics of early typewriters.  One reason these others have not caught on is that it has been shown that QWERTY-trained touch typists do not become faster when retrained on a different keyboard, since it is impossible for touch typists to completely unlearn the QWERTY training.  This has been studied as an example of the "installed base" advantage, of which another notable example is Microsoft Windows.  (Software designed for Windows typically performs sub-optimally when "ported" to another operating system.  Thus, technically better-performing operating systems do not supplant Windows in the marketplace because of the advantage Windows enjoys in terms of the installed base of compatible software.)
 * Bob99 (talk) 17:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Your two statements:
 * "the QWERTY keyboard layout was designed to prevent mechanical keys from jamming."
 * "That meant using a configuration that slowed typists down somewhat,"
 * Don't hold up. The first is true, but the second isn't a corollary of that. The point of the QWERTY layout isn't to slow anyone down, it's to carry on working at full speed whilst avoiding the type bar clashing problem. It does this by trying to keep the most common sequentially-used typebars physically separated from each other. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:01, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * If any of this is really true about the design of the QWERTY keyboard, why are "E" and "R" next to each other? These are extremely commonly used next to each other in English and other Romance languages, and I remember from typewriter days of having trouble with words like "here" and "there" causing type bars to clash and get stuck.  If the QWERTY designer was really trying to avoid that, I'd say he failed. Jpp42 (talk) 06:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd have to disagree with the statement "QWERTY-trained touch typists do not become faster when retrained on a different keyboard, since it is impossible for touch typists to completely unlearn the QWERTY training." I learned to touch-type on a QWERTY keyboard in 1967 and spent quite a few years earning my living from the QWERTY keyboard. In 1986 I trained myself to use the Malt Layout

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/technical-keyboard-information/academic-papers/236-lillian-malt-papers.html

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/technical-keyboard-information/academic-papers/235-keyboards-designed-to-fit-hands-and-reduce-postural-stress.html

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/technical-keyboard-information/academic-papers/234-a-keyboard-to-increase-productivity-and-reduce-postural-stress.html

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/technical-keyboard-information/academic-papers/233-computer-related-upper-limb-disorder.html

I was still able to use the QWERTY layout and for about 5 or so years after I was still able to exceed 50 words per minute touch typing, without any difficulty. In 2010 I can still use QWERTY, though I prefer (and choose) not to. There was no question of "unlearning" QWERTY since it was never "replaced" by Maltron, but was in "parallel"*.

I've now moved on to "touch typing" in software based shorthand (on the Maltron keyboard), and I've certainly trebled my QWERTY speed.

On Edit: 21 Jun. *My first MALTRON keyboard had a switchable QWERTY/MALTRON layout with dual-engraved keytops and I made a deliberate decision when I started using the MALTRON keyboard to use the Malt layout. Because of the vast difference between the 3D curves of the MALTRON keyboard and the flat QWERTY keyboard, and the resultant kinaesthetic muscle memory essential for touch typing, there is little or no confusion between the two keyboards, any more than there is confusion between a QWERTY computer keyboard and a musical instrument keyboard.

Proword (talk) 07:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Fast enough
I guess it's just my opinion, and since it's just my opinion it doesn't matter, but I think QWERTY keyboards type plenty fast. I already type too fast on them, frequently typing words I didn't mean to (not typos, exactly, because they're spelled correctly and the grammar usually stays fine). So for me the problem is that I wish the keys were harder to hit, like on a typewriter. But maybe if I switched to such a thing I'd regret it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.28.223 (talk) 07:05, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Backslash Key
The "standard layout" shown has an enlarged enter key and the backslash key to the left of the backspace key. But most keyboards (e.g., Dell, HP, IBM, Apple, Matias, iHome, LifeWorks, Advanced Logic Research) have the backslash to the right of the right bracket key, and this goes back to PS/2 keyboards. Somebody should update the layout or show both variants. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.196.244.178 (talk) 00:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Purpose
What is the justification for stating that being able to type many words using only the left hand helps left-handed people?

For someone who actually can type with both hands, the typical reason to type one-handed temporarily is to free up the other hand to do something else like turn a page, adjust the mouse position (on a computer), etc. Most people use their dominant hand for that, so freeing up the right hand and typing with the left is more advantageous for a right-hander. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.71.75 (talk) 00:57, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest that given the minuscule amount of time a typist would spend typing "one-handed" (using a mouse, turn a page etc) there would be no advantage for "right-handers" in this situation. The mouse is a device which is used to perform tasks which cannot be performed as easily (if at all) by keystrokes.

Proword (talk) 01:59, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

UK-Extended Keyboard
Can somebody check the keyboard shortcuts for typing letters with accents? I believe that in many of the listed cases Ctrl should be used instead of AltGr. 87.115.122.141 (talk) 18:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Clarity of "0" and "1"
The original presentation is cited thus:

However, the article then suggests that the patented version of 1878 did not include "0" or "1". I would assume by this that the original design *did* include the "1", but it was removed in 1878? If so, should this be made clearer? 118.208.192.121 (talk) 15:02, 1 October 2010 (UTC) Woops, should have logged in... This comment is from me Nsmith 84 (talk) 15:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Remington No. 389
"Remington No. 2 and No. 3 and No. 389 of 1878" seems kidding. What's Remington No. 389?--210.128.58.16 (talk) 08:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Half-qwerty image
I've just restored the half-qwerty image The silent gnome removed. Eir edit summary was "Removed pic. The description is clear enough, the pic isn't and it messes up the page." I personally find the picture useful; it makes it immediately obvious what is being described, without needing to read the detail of the text at all. I have, at the same time fixed up the layout. —me_and 23:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I too found the pic useful. 173.164.86.190 (talk) 21:34, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

ASDF ocurence
I added the folowing observation to the entry refering to the QWERTY keyboard on the asdf page: "this sequence of four characters may often be observed as meaningless text input, by itself or followed by other characters, (where any random sequence would suffice), with the possible explanation that this type of keyboard is the most popular, the user's right hand might mostly be on the mouse (or a similar device) and these four characters are the most accessible alphanumeric characters to the left hand with respect to the fingers used in typing" It might not be the apropriate place for such an observation, but I think it's worth mentioning. I often heard programmers saying "Don't use 'asdf', use something meaningfull". My personal perception is that people use it as a jargon, and if right, it's also worth mentioning. However, I think that the place of the observation should be on the QWERTY keyboard page and the entry should link there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.113.41.37 (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Improper phrasing
I object to this phrasing:

"While it is often said that QWERTY was designed to "slow down" typists, this is incorrect – it was designed to prevent jams[1]"

It is not incorrect to say this if it was designed to prevent jam's, as a jam only occurred when you pressed two keys in rapid succession. You could say speed up bumps were designed to prevent accidents and NOT to slow down cars, which would be nonsense because going FAST over speed bumps wouldn't really be safe. It's simply not fair to say it's INCORRECT. None of the citations reference original designers or quotes about their intentions so the word "designed" is questionable.

A better wording would be:

While it is often said that QWERTY was designed to "slow down" typists, there is no documentation to support the claim this was an intentional design decision. The inefficient layout does help prevent jams in "up-stoke" models.

Stevemulligan (talk) 13:02, 15 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd agree there. Certainly such a statement is not NPOV. Why did you do it (talk) 21:26, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and removed it. Besides, the source that was cited doesn't conform to the reliable sources guidelines. Why did you do it (talk) 21:31, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

In September 1977 Lillian Malt presented a paper to a conference of PIRA - the Printing Industry Research Association - in which, on page 1, she says:

"One piece of equipment which is universally recognised as being ill-fitted to human operation is the ubiquitous typewriter keyboard. The standard Scholes-designed keyboard with its qwerty layout, must be one of the very few pieces of equipment which has entirely resisted improvement, which could and should have been made to complement our advancing technological ability.

It has been said of the Scholes letter layout that it would probably have been chosen if the objective was to find the least efficient - in terms of learning time and speed achievable - and the most error producing character arrangement. This is not surprising when one considers that a team of people spent one year developing this layout so that it should provide the greatest inhibition to fast keying. This was no Machiavellian plot, but necessary because the mechanism of the early typewriters required slow operation."

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/academic-papers/236-lillian-malt-papers.html

This would seem to be a fairly reliable source.

Proword (talk) 03:02, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternatives to QWERTY
It says:" I love you!!!!  " at the end of this chapter, i welcome it but not so sure that is the right place for that phrase. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.64.82.39 (talk) 12:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

At the bottom of the subtopic header there is a link to footnote reference ten. I am going to replace this link with a citation needed template as there is conflicting (or mis-sourced) data contained within the link. The data is as follows:

There is no mention of Blickensderfer in the immediate link. There may be a mention within the article, but that requires a membership, and;

In the link they make mention of Dvorak, which had the reported '70% of English words on the home-row' within the line 'aoeuidhtns' according to a link shared on the Dvorak page as a source, featured on Discover Magazine.

The removal of the 70% line may or may not be necessary pending a more tributable source. Typenolies (talk) 04:32, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Bias
Once again, approved Wikipedians concur that 'God's in his Heaven and all's well with the world.' In this instance, the article, from the outset, favours QWERTY over its rivals, on the basis of flimsy evidence: two named economists in a referenced link which can be accessed only by subscribers (is it even proper for Wikipedian 'evidence' to depend on a subscription-only link? Is a subscription-only link indeed acceptable evidence?). Having thus expressed bias in favour of the QWERTY layout, the article naively ignores and omits to mention the enormous commercial interests presumably (if quietly) in play between rival keyboard layouts, making its casual, predictably conservative bias particularly ill-advised and foolish.--86.31.105.33 (talk) 23:29, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Source
Source 6 references in this former paragraph below is a blog

http://yasuoka.blogspot.com/2006/08/sholes-discovered-that-many-english.html

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. His 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,[5] but called in question [6]

^ Yasuoka [1]

I have therefore edited the paragraph to read.

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. His 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[5]. However this is called into question elsewhere 'citation needed'

Can someone stick in the 'Citation needed' in the right format

SeldomSerious (talk) 22:19, 25 August 2011 (UTC)Seldom Serious

Introduction
"particularly in the United States" doesn't sound correct... I think the QWERTY keyboard has been universally adopted in all English speaking countries. I don't see why the US is specifically mentioned. 2.102.186.37 (talk) 01:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Backquote not a "dead key"
I would suggest that Backquote is not a "dead key" - when typed on its own it generates a ` symbol, which at the very least is used in LaTeX to represent an open quote. The Wikipedia entry for Dead Keys states, "The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself", which doesn't hold for the Backquote key. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.84.13.145 (talk) 13:22, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

An illustration of the first keyboard
Here is an illustration of keybord, on page 195 http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6212491s/f211.image They say that before, some keyboards were circular.

Titre : La Télégraphie à l'exposition universelle de 1867 Éditeur : imp. Impériale (Paris) Date d'édition : 1869 Type : monographie imprimée Langue : Français Format : Gr. in-8° (4°) Format : application/pdf Droits : domaine public Identifiant : ark:/12148/bpt6k6212491s Source : Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Littérature et art, V-17654 Relation : http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb336228498 Provenance : bnf.fr Date de mise en ligne : 16/07/2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.199.81.184 (talk) 22:57, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Y as a vowel?
Perhaps someone could come up with a definitive (ie: non Wikipedia) reference that actually states Y "can be a vowel" as Opera hat suggests. At best, I found http://www.reference.com/browse/y which states it is a semi-vowel - If Opera hat is correct, this would mean a semi-circle "can be a circle" also... a a semi-detatched house can be a "detatched house also". Additionally, on reverting my edit, he suggests I read up on "VOWEL" and gives a Wikipedia link (is referencing Wikipedia an acceptable source anyway?).

The article states "There is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters." thus clearly indicating not only 5 vowels, but that a vowel sound does not HAVE to use vowels to be produced. MrZoolook (talk) 02:33, 25 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Obviously no evidence is forthcomming. MrZoolook (talk) 08:52, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
 * No - it means that vowel letters can stand for more than one sound (got and go, for example), and that combinations of vowel letters with other vowel/consonant letters can make a variety of sounds (met and meat/meet, moot, cat, cart etc.) I can't think of an English word that creates a vowel sound without using a, e, i, o, u or y. As for your logic about if semi-vowel=vowel then semi-circle=circle, this depends on treating language as if it were built up entirely from small units of consistent meaning. It isn't. Compare half-pint, which is not a pint, and half-bottle, which is still a bottle, only a small one. The letter "Y" in English functions as both a consonant and a vowel - such as in the word "yearly". The problem is not that Y is in some strange uncertain quantum state, it's that our division of letters into vowels and consonants can't be made absolutely cleanly.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 09:35, 12 July 2011 (UTC)


 * At least in french:
 * * 6 voyelles écrites : A, E, I, O, U, Y.
 * * 16 voyelles phonétiques, ou vocoïdes : a, ɑ, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ, u, y, ə, œ, ø, ɑ̃, ɔ̃, ɛ̃, œ̃. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.199.81.184 (talk) 22:58, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Qwerty and Azerty
Artile gives:

(...)

It is often say that Azerty comes from Qwerty. But it looks closer from the previous one, no?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.199.81.184 (talk) 12:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Previous keyboards
When this article deals with the Murray Qwerty Keyboard; it might make sense to indicate that other keyboard were considered before, such as explained in Ticker Tape page article (See Illustration). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.4.34.19 (talk) 09:27, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Deleted section "effects" on "negative connotations"
I've just deleted the section of the article entitled "Effects". It's based on only one source, a blog post at which doesn't look at all reliable to me. The original paper talks about the "emotional valence" of words, which I think isn't the same as "connotations". And the research has been strongly challenged at. If we're to cover this topic on Wikipedia, we need to give due emphasis to both sides of the debate. But personally I don't think it's significant enough to deserve coverage here, unless further and more reliable sources can be found. Jowa fan (talk) 02:28, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there a QWERTY copyright?
Is there a copyright on the original QWERTY keyboard layout still extant? I raise this question not merely by way of 'original research,' but because, if there were still in existence such a copyright, still accumulating royalties to a current copyright owner, this would clearly have huge potential implications in terms of their continuing accumulation of wealth and power to influence/suppress customer choice of keyboard layout.--46.65.8.42 (talk) 22:35, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * IANAL. Copyright duration depends on country. However, the article states:
 * "The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878,"
 * Something copyright in 1878, in the US for example, is now in the public domain. (See Copyright_law_of_the_United_States) I expect that other countries would also have long since expired. You may also be thinking about patents: those are 20 years in the US, so again, long expired.
 * Deathanatos (talk) 08:46, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Somebody told me that in fact AZERTY was introduced in France to circumvent the then valid QWERTY patent. Unfortunately, I have no valid citation to mention this in the articles. -- Karl432 (talk) 18:39, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

International variants - move to separate article
I don't think that this edit listing all of the international variants (the content was moved from Keyboard layout was a good idea, as it clutters the QWERTY article unnecessarily. I suggest that the text should be in a separate article, with a summary in both QWERTY and Keyboard layout. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:59, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Could modern computers be made without QWERTY?
I heard on The World at One on Saint George's Day 2013 that modern computers could be made without the familiar QWERTYUIOP keyboard - if any one knows anything about this, it could go in the  article. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 15:10, 23 April 2013 (UTC)


 * It's covered by QWERTY. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:00, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

New historical research challenges "slow the operator down" story
Recently, new historical research has come out debunking the idea that the keys were arranged to slow people down, rather it was designed to assist the first customers - telegraph operators.

News coverage on the research: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/06/qwerty-keyboard_n_3223611.html?ir=Technology

PDF on the research: http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/139379/1/42_161.pdf

--Wowaconia (talk) 20:23, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

From Huffingtonpost:

''Most of us were taught that the man who invented the keyboard created the QWERTY design to slow typists down. This popular theory was just debunked.'' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Proword (talk • contribs) 03:57, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The paper by Lillian Malt referred to above

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/technical-keyboard-information/academic-papers/236-lillian-malt-papers.html

is a refereed paper submitted to the Printing Industry Research Association in 1977, and shows quite plainly that this Huffington article is false. The story is NOT an urban myth. Whether Malt's assertions are correct is a different matter altogether. However, if anything she presented in her paper was incorrect, it would not have been accepted for presentation. Proword (talk) 03:53, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Contrary to Popular Belief
Contrary to popular belief[5], the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down

This expression should removed as it is merely unsupported assertion, and cannot be verified in line with Wiki guidelines.

I would suggest that it be rewritten:

Some have claimed that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to "provide the greatest inhibition to fast keying" while others say that this is merely an urban legend.

Proword (talk) 08:42, 24 May 2013 (UTC) tag in the edit request template to   ★Ama   TALK   CONTRIBS  17:01, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * answered=no
 * This version (linked) is more accurate, sourced and complete and it talk about 6 different french-canadian keyboards (french canadian, hybrid french-canadian/US English, french-canadian dvorak, french canadian legacy (CSA 1988), canadian french ― CSA (Apple) and Canadian multilingual (CSA 1992)). It would be more appropriate to use this version completely instead (read both and come back if I am wrong). Point 2 I added a picture of the real CSA keyboard using these pictograms, not the traditionnal french-canadian keyboard. The traditionnal french-canadian keyboard use labels written in french. The last thing, the «»° key is mandatory if you want to type proper french, they are not optional :
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_QWERTY_keyboard_language_variants#French_(Canada) Bouviera87 (talk) 18:30, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 July 2023
In the SVG files for both Norwegian layouts, move the € legend on the E key to the lower half of the key, similar to the Danish layout. 2A01:799:39F:EA00:608A:B391:4396:5BB1 (talk) 10:30, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page QWERTY. Please make your request at the talk page for the files concerned.  — Paper9oll  (🔔 • 📝)  16:30, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Specifically, you need to make the request at c:File:KB_Norway.svg (on Wikimedia Commons). I don't know if the person who made that file is still active so if you don't get a response, you will have to do it (or get it done) there yourself. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:42, 22 July 2023 (UTC)