Editing Dead key (section)

==Mechanical typewriters==
[[File:Idazmakina.jpg |thumb|Spanish typewriter (QWERTY keyboard) with dead keys for acute, circumflex, diaeresis and grave accents.]]
{{see also|Tilde#Role of mechanical typewriters}}
The dead key is  mechanical in origin, and "dead" means without movement. On mechanical typebar typewriters, all characters are of equal width. As a key is pressed, a metal typebar strikes the character onto an inked ribbon, transferring ink to the paper, and a mechanism is triggered which causes the paper (inserted in a ''[[typewriter carriage|carriage]]'') to move forward one space. To use a single diacritic, such as the [[acute accent]], with multiple foundation characters (such as ''á, é, í, ó, ú'') the decision was made to create a new character, the acute accent or diacritic {{char|´}}, which did not exist in typesetting as of that date. Due to a change in the mechanism, striking the key containing the accent did not advance the paper (the key was "dead" or non-[[spacing character|spacing]]), meaning it could be followed by any character that was to appear under the acute accent, producing an [[overstrike|overstruck]] character. This second key moved the paper carriage forward.

Note that with mechanical keyboards, the acute accent could be followed by any character, to create new combinations such as ''q'' with acute accent.