diaeresis or umlaut (e.g. ä, ë, ö, etc.) is generated by a dead key combination AltGr+ 2, then the letter. Thus AltGr+ 2 a produces ä. In this layout, the grave accent key ( `¦) becomes, as it also does in the US International layout, a dead key modifying the character generated by the next key pressed. The apostrophe, double-quote, tilde and circumflex ( caret) keys are not changed, becoming dead keys only when 'shifted' with AltGr. Additional precomposed characters are also obtained by shifting the 'normal' key using the AltGr key. The extended keyboard is software installed from the Windows control panel, and the extended characters are not normally engraved on keyboards. In Linux-based systems, the euro symbol is typically mapped to Alt+ 5 instead of Alt+ U, the tilde acts as a normal key, and several accented letters from other European languages are accessible through combinations with left Alt. Polish letters are also accessible by using the Compose key. Further information: British and American keyboards United Kingdom and Ireland (except Mac) keyboard layout United Kingdom Keyboard layout for Linux

The QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé. [1] QWERTY was designed for English, a language with accents (' diacritics') appearing only in a few words of foreign origin. The standard US keyboard has no provision for these at all; the need was later met by the so-called " US-International" keyboard mapping, which uses " dead keys" to type accents without having to add more physical keys. (The same principle is used in the standard US keyboard layout for macOS, but in a different way). Most European (including UK) keyboards for PCs have an AltGr key ('Alternative Graphics' key, [a] replaces the right Alt key) that enables easy access to the most common diacritics used in the territory where sold. For example, default keyboard mapping for the UK/Ireland keyboard has the diacritics used in Irish but these are rarely printed on the keys; but to type the accents used in Welsh and Scots Gaelic requires the use of a " UK Extended" keyboard mapping and the dead key or compose key method. This arrangement applies to Windows, ChromeOS and Linux; macOS computers have different techniques. The US International and UK Extended mappings provide many of the diacritics needed for students of other European languages.The cedilla-versions of the characters do not exist in the Romanian language (they came to be used due to a historic bug). [40] The UCS now says that encoding this was a mistake because it messed up Romanian data and the letters with cedilla and the letters with comma are the same letter with a different style. [41] United Kingdom (Extended) Layout United Kingdom Extended Keyboard Layout for Windows United Kingdom Extended Keyboard Layout for Linux United Kingdom International Keyboard Layout for Linux In the era of mechanical typewriters, combined characters such as é and õ were created by the use of dead keys for the diacritics ( ′, ~), which did not move the paper forward. Thus the ′ and e would be printed at the same location on the paper, creating é.

The UK Extended keyboard uses mostly the AltGr key to add diacritics to the letters a, e, i, n, o, u, w and y (the last two being used in Welsh) as appropriate for each character, as well as to their capitals. Pressing the key and then a character that does not take the specific diacritic produces the behaviour of a standard keyboard. The key presses followed by spacebar generate a stand-alone mark.: In touch-typing, the second row of the "QWERTY" keyboard is known as the "home row," as that is where the four fingers of each hand return to as a base. The fingers of the left hand rest on the letters A, S, D, and F, while those of the right hand rest on H, J, K, and L. From Windows XP SP2 onwards, Microsoft has included a variant of the British QWERTY keyboard (the "United Kingdom Extended" keyboard layout) that can additionally generate several diacritical marks. This supports input on a standard physical UK keyboard for many languages without changing positions of frequently used keys, which is useful when working with text in Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish — languages native to parts of the UK ( Wales, parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively).The letters ASDFGHJKL are used to represent intense emotion, such as frustration or excitement. Here is more information about ASDFGHJKL, with examples of use. This article or section may need to be cleaned up or summarized because it has been split from/to List of QWERTY keyboard language variants. Two keyboard layout that are based on Qwerty are used in Arabic-speaking countries. Microsoft designate them as Arabic (101) and Arabic (102). There are four Romanian-specific characters that are incorrectly implemented in versions of Microsoft Windows until Vista came out: In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the latter half of the alphabet, N to Z, right-to-left. [3] :12–20 In April 1870 he arrived at a four-row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard, moving six vowel letters, A, E, I, O, U, and Y, to the upper row as follows: [3] :24–25 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -