Editing Typewriter (section)

=== Keyboard layouts ===
[[File:UnderwoodKeyboard.jpg|thumb|The "[[QWERTY]]" layout of typewriter keys became a [[de facto standard|''de facto'' standard]] in several countries and continues to be used long after the mechanical reasons for its adoption ceased to apply.]]

==== QWERTY ====
{{main|QWERTY}}
The 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriters established the "QWERTY" layout for the letter keys. During the period in which Sholes and his colleagues were experimenting with this invention, other keyboard arrangements were apparently tried, but these are poorly documented.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Liebowitz |first1=S. J. |last2=Stephen E. Margolis |year=1990 |title=The Fable of the Keys |url=http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html |url-status=live |journal=Journal of Law & Economics |publisher=The University of Chicago |volume=XXXIII |issue=April 1990 |pages=1 |doi=10.1086/467198 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080703204106/http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/%7Eliebowit/keys1.html |archive-date=2008-07-03 |access-date=2008-06-18 |quote=This article examines the history, economics, and ergonomics of the typewriter keyboard. We show that David's version of the history of the market's rejection of Dvorak does not report the true history, and we present evidence that the continued use of Qwerty is efficient given the current understanding of keyboard design. |s2cid=14262869|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The QWERTY layout of keys has become the de facto standard for English-language typewriter and computer keyboards. Other languages written in the [[Latin alphabet]] sometimes use variants of the QWERTY layouts, such as the French [[AZERTY]], the Italian [[QZERTY]] and the German [[QWERTZ]] layouts.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Francis |first=Darryl |date=2015-11-01 |title=AZERTY & QWERTZ keyboards |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&issn=00437980&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA435533172&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs |journal=Word Ways |language=English |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=292–295}}</ref>

The QWERTY layout is not the most efficient layout possible for the English language. [[Touch typing|Touch-typists]] are required to move their fingers between rows to type the most common letters. Although the QWERTY keyboard was the most commonly used layout in typewriters, a better, less strenuous keyboard was being searched for throughout the late 1900s.<ref>{{Citation |last=Kroemer |first=Karl H.E |title=Keyboards and keying an annotated bibliography of the literature from 1878 to 1999 |journal=Universal Access in the Information Society |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=99–160 |year=2014 |doi=10.1007/s102090100012 |s2cid=207064170}}</ref>

One popular but incorrect<ref name="Smithsonian">{{Cite web |last=Stamp |first=Jimmy |title=Fact of Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the-legend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/ |website=Smithsonian}}</ref> explanation for the QWERTY arrangement is that it was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing of typebars by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther from each other inside the machine.<ref name="David, P.A. 1986">David, P. A. (1986). "Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: the Necessity of History". In Parker, William N., ''Economic History and the Modern Economist''. Basil Blackwell, New York and Oxford.</ref>

==== Other layouts for English ====
A number of radically different layouts such as [[Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak]] have been proposed to reduce the perceived inefficiencies of QWERTY, but none have been able to displace the QWERTY layout; their proponents claim considerable advantages, but so far none has been widely used. The [[Blickensderfer typewriter]] with its [[DHIATENSOR]] layout may have possibly been the first attempt at optimizing the keyboard layout for efficiency advantages.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Instructions for Using the Blickensderfer Typewriter |url=http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/eaa_A0562/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140221053745/http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/eaa_A0562/ |archive-date=2014-02-21 |access-date=2014-01-03}}</ref>

On modern keyboards, the exclamation point is the shifted character on the 1 key, because these were the last characters to become "standard" on keyboards. Holding the spacebar down usually suspended the carriage advance mechanism (a so-called "[[dead key]]" feature), allowing one to superimpose multiple keystrikes on a single location. The ¢ symbol (meaning cents) was located above the number 6 on American electric typewriters, whereas [[ANSI]]-[[INCITS]]-standard [[computer keyboard]]s have ^ instead.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130131061059/http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=ANSI%20INCITS%20154-1988%20%28R1999%29 ANSI INCITS 154-1988 (R1999) Office Machines and Supplies – Alphanumeric Machines – Keyboard Arrangement (formerly ANSI X3.154-1988 (R1999))] (retrieved 2012-07-04)</ref>

==== Keyboards for other languages ====
[[File:Lettera 22 2.JPG|thumb|Italian typewriter [[Olivetti Lettera 22]]]]
[[File:آلة كاتبة قديمة 01.jpg|thumb|Arabic typewriter [[Imperial Typewriter Company]]]]

The keyboards for other Latin languages are broadly similar to QWERTY but are optimised for the relevant orthography. In addition to some changes in the order of letters, perhaps the most obvious is the presence of [[precomposed character]]s and [[diacritic]]s.

Many non-Latin alphabets have keyboard layouts that have nothing to do with QWERTY. The Russian layout, for instance, puts the common trigrams ыва, про, and ить on adjacent keys so that they can be typed by rolling the fingers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Purcell |first=Edward T. |date=1974 |title=Computer-Controlled Drills for First-Year Russian |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/306437 |journal=The Slavic and East European Journal |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=56–68 |doi=10.2307/306437 |jstor=306437 |issn=0037-6752|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Text in the [[Arabic alphabet]] is written from right to left (rather than from left to right): consequently, the carriage on an Arabic typewriter moves to the right after each keystroke.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Arabic Selectric |url=https://www.phillytypewriter.com/arabic-selectric.html#/ |access-date=2025-02-27 |website=PHILLY TYPEWRITER |language=en}}</ref> In Arabic script, letters take different shapes depending upon their position in the word and whether they are connected to a preceding letter. A special key is used to allow switching between independent and connected letters.<ref>{{Cite web |last=مؤلف |date=2017-02-13 |title=The Arabic Alphabet: A Guide to the Phonology and Orthography of MSA and Lebanese Arabic |url=https://www.lebanesearabicinstitute.com/arabic-alphabet/ |access-date=2025-02-27 |website=Lebanese Arabic Institute |language=en-US}}</ref>

Typewriters were also made for [[East Asian languages]] with thousands of characters, such as [[Chinese typewriter|Chinese]] or [[Japanese typewriter|Japanese]]. They were not easy to operate, but professional typists used them for a long time until the development of electronic word processors and [[laser printer]]s in the 1980s.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Makinen |first=Julie |date=2016-09-03 |title=Before the computer, there was something almost as complex: the Chinese typewriter |url=https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-chinese-typewriter-snap-story.html |access-date=2022-04-27 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}</ref>