QWERTZ

The QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a widely used computer and typewriter keyboard layout that is mostly used in German-speaking regions. The name comes from the first six letters at the top left of the keyboard: "Q", "W", "E", "R", "T", and "Z". It is pronounced either the same as "quartz" or to rhyme with "squirts".Fact|date=March 2008

It differs from the QWERTY layout by interchanging 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. Part of the keyboard is adapted to include local umlauted vowels, such as "ä", "ö", "ü", etc. Some special symbols also have a different place , and the Ctrl key is called Strg (for "Steuerung", English "control", although it is sometimes misinterpreted as "String").

Models based on QWERTZ are used in Switzerland [ [http://www.snv.ch/ Swiss Norm] , former VSM norm, SN 074021] , and in the majority of Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe and Central European countries that use the Latin alphabet, with the exception of the Baltic States. Only German QWERTZ keyboards have the "Strg" key, Swiss keyboards have the same key labeled "ctrl".

A QWERTZ keyboard layout is sometimes informally nicknamed a "kezboard", as typing the word "keyboard" in the QWERTY manner on a QWERTZ keyboard would generate the sequence "kezboard". The same is true of QWERTY keyboards in the hands of a person accustomed to a QWERTZ layout.

ee also

*AZERTY
*Blickensderfer typewriter
*Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

References