Editing Typewriter (section)

==== 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>