Region-specific layouts

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See also Keyboard layouts on Wikipedia.

List of country-specific standards grouped according to basic characteristics and ordered by country-code.

All keyboards have Alt Gr unless specified otherwise.

Background

Common differences in physical keyboard designs over the world are those between ISO (“International”), ANSI (American) and JIS (Japanese).

On the ISO keyboards, the Enter key is vertical (sometimes termed an “ISO Enter”) and the left and right Shift keys are an equal distance from the traditional home position.

On the ANSI keyboards, the Enter key is horizontal and the Left Shift is wider, placing it much closer to the centre than the Right Shift. Traditionally, American-based layouts also lack an Alt Gr, and instead have a simple Right Alt which performs the same function as the Left Alt.

On Japanese keyboards, the ISO-style Enter and Left Shift are normally accepted, and the Backspace and Right Shift are both shortened by one key. In addition to this the space bar is shorter to accommodate more keys on its row.

ISO QWERTY

BR (Brazil)

The ABNT2 keyboard has two variants: one with ISO key count, and with one additional key. The extra key is left of the right Shift, which is shortened to make room.

In keyboards without this extra key, / and ? are reached through AltGr-Q and AltGr-W. A number of other characters used in Portuguese language is made available via AltGr combinations, as well. Position of ç and dead accent keys are very similar to the Portuguese layout.

The special characters in numeric row follow the ANSI sequence, the exception being 6, a (dead key) umlaut replacing the circumflex. This is a major difference from the Portuguese layout.

Many fullsize Brazilian keyboards also bisect the plus-key on the numeric-pad, replacing its bottom-half with a “thousands separator” key.

  • Samples

  • Brazilian ABNT2 Full Size

  • Brazilian ABNT2 with extra key

CA (Canada)

  • Layouts
  • KB Canadian French text.svg

    Canadian French layout

  • KB Canadian Multilingual Standard comment-en.svg

    Canadian Multilingual layout

The ISO, QWERTY Canadian French and Canadian Multilingual layouts are prevalent in primarily French-speaking regions, US ANSI keyboards are commonplace as well. Of note, the Canadian Multilingual layout is most commonly seen on Apple devices, though other OEMs (e.g. Dell) have sold keyboards in this configuration.

  • Samples

  • Canadian French IBM Model M

  • Canadian Multilingual AEK II (missing two keys on the numpad)

DK (Denmark)

  • KB Danish.svg

    Danish layout

EE (Estonia)

  • KB Estonian.svg

    Estonian layout

Very much like SE, but replaces Å and ¨ with Ü and Õ respectively.

ES (Spain and Hispanic America)

  • Layouts
  • KB Spanish.svg

    Spanish layout

  • KB Latin American.svg

    Latin American Spanish layout

There are two main layouts used in Spanish: "Spanish (Spain)", used in Spain, and "Spanish (Latin America)", common in Latin American countries (although the former layout sees some degree of usage as well).

Both have an Ñ key immediately to the right of the L key and shuffle around typographic symbols with respect to the base US layout. The easiest way of distinguishing between layouts is to look two keys to the right of the Ñ key: the "Spanish (Spain)" layout has a Ç, while the "Spanish (Latin America)" one sports a closing curly bracket (}).

FI (Finland)

Same as SE.

FO (Færœ Islands)

  • KB Faroese.svg

    Faroese layout

Very much like DK, but including the eth (Ð/ð) character.

IE (Ireland)

IS (Iceland)

  • KB Iceland.svg

    Icelandic layout

GL (Greenland)

NO (Norway)

  • Layouts
  • KB Norway.svg

    Norwegian layout

  • KB NorwaySami.svg

    Norwegian with Sámi layout

SE (Sweden)

  • KB Sweden.svg

    Swedish layout

Also used in Finland.

Finnish multilingual

  • KB Finnish Multilingual.svg

    Finnish multilingual layout

A project by the Finnish IT Center for Science, it builds on the Swedish-Finnish layout and adds a wide array of foreign characters for communication with other Nordic and European languages. Typographical marks like em-dash and non-breaking space are also added.

See also: Finnish Multilingual layout on Wikipedia

Nordic

Sometimes labelled "NR"; a layout where four or five keys contains a combination of the key legends for SE/FI, NO and DK: the other keys are identical in the three layouts.

How the different legends are laid out differs greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer. The Swedish/Finnish legend is often in the primary position, it having the most users. The keys that differ have mostly the same symbols only with different modifiers, and where some manufacturers lay out each included layout in its own column, other manufacturers don't even bother differentiating.

Sometimes but rarely, the legends are in a different colour for each included layout.

  • Samples

  • A "Nordic layout" key with unintelligible legend

UK (United Kingdom)

  • Layouts
  • KB United Kingdom.svg

    United Kingdom and Ireland (except Mac) layout

  • KB United Kingdom Mac - Apple Keyboard (MC184B).svg

    United Kingdom version of Apple keyboard

The UK PC and Macintosh layouts are different. In particular, The UK PC layout swaps " and @ relative to the US layout, while the UK Macintosh layout does not. \ is placed next to return and above right shift on a UK Macintosh keyboard, while on a UK PC keyboard it is placed next to left shift. On both Mac and PC layouts, £ is placed above 3; the PC layout moves # next to the enter key (where Macs position \), while the Macintosh keyboard omits # entirely, requiring option+3 to enter it. As the option layer is not printed on Apple keyboards, it appears to the user that # cannot be typed. The Matias Tactile Pro series of keyboards for Mac do depict the option and shift+option layers on the keycaps.

On the modern PC layout, Alt Gr is used sparingly. The key to the left of 1 has three legends: ` (unshifted), ¬ (shifted) and ¦ (with Alt Gr), and Alt Gr+4 gives €. Alt Gr also adds an acute accent to the five vowels, for loanwords and for the Irish fada. Grave accents used in Scottish Gaelic cannot be entered. Welsh has its own keyboard layout.

ISO QWERTZ

AT (Austria)

  • German-Keyboard-Layout-T2-Version1-large.png

    German "T2" layout; characters shown in black are also present in the traditional "T1" layout

CH (Switzerland)

  • KB Swiss.svg

    Swiss layout

DE (Germany)

Same as the Austrian layout.

Neo

The Neo layout is scientifically optimised for typing German as well as English, and is also said to work well for programmers. See www.neo-layout.org for more info.

HU (Hungary)

  • Layouts
  • KB Hungary.svg

    Hungarian layout

  • KB Hungary2.svg

    Alternative Hungarian layout

There are two popular alternatives, one with the "ű" key to the left of the Enter key, and another with that key to the left of Backspace.

Notice also the unusual position of the "0" to the left of "1".

ISO AZERTY

BE (Belgium)

Belgians use both AZERTY and QWERTY in their country.

FR (France)

  • KB France.svg

    French layout

ANSI QWERTY

NL (Netherlands)

Dutchmen use the US-International layout.

TR (Turkey)

Turks use an QWERTY-modified layout called "Q-keyboard" and a less-common, scientifically optimised layout called "F-keyboard".

Turkish F-keyboard

The Turkish F-layout is optimised for the Turkish language. Thanks to this layout's existence, "Turkey has broken 14 world records in typewriting championships between 1957 and 1995."[1]

ANSI QWERTY (without Alt Gr)

US (United States)

  • Layouts
  • KB United States-NoAltGr.svg

    United States layout

  • KB US-International.svg

    US-International layout (Windows)

External links

References

  1. ↑ Turkish F-keyboard on Wikipedia
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