or: So many keyboards, so little time

It has recently come to my attention that keyboards are different around the world. It’s not something I’d considered previously and it makes perfect sense.

That’s correct, not everywhere uses the QWERTY keyboard which was originally thrust upon most English writing countries in the age of the typewriter. The keys were placed in this order to avoid the most frequently used keys from hitting each other when the typists picked up speed.

It stands to reason that countries where another language is favoured over English, they would not find this keyboard so beneficial.

Apparently it’s no longer beneficial for any touch typist on computers either as it is not an optimimum layout for speed. Fingers need to stretch too far to hit keys that would typically go together to form the most frequently used words.

I’ve encountered a few different keyboards in my travels and a task which I normally find fairly quick evolves into something more labourious instead.

I’m now in Mauritius and typing on a French keyboard. It has taken an inordinately long time as I’ve searched for the keys for some of the letters while speeding through others. I’ve decided on an alternate approach, I’m now simply typing it to fix later.

And that is also why this is such a short post this week.

* Thanks to The Jacksons for the title to the post.