International QWERTY keyboards

International QWERTY keyboards feature minor changes to the QWERTY key layout used on most computer keyboards.

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 use QWERTZ keyboards. They 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.

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.

Scandinavia

Danish and Norwegian layouts only switching Æ, Ø, and Å 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, and occasionally "kezboards".

The Swiss and the German keyboards are not similarly designed.

Hungarian

Hungarian keyboards change the Y and Z as the Czech do, also there is an insert at the end of the upper row, after P, namely the double-accented O ("Ő"), and the accented U ("Ú"). The home row is the same as the US-International but it is longer than usual: it consists of the keys ASDFGHJKL É Á Ű. Lastly, an accented I ("Í") is added at varying places, usually left of the Y (which is on the bottom row, see beginning of paragraph), shortening the left Shift key.

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.

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 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 keyboards as well as F keyboards in the market, the former is much more popular.

See also

* Internationalization and localization

References