About the Parts of The parts of a keyboard can be confusing, particularly to new or occasional users. This article describes the parts and functions of the keys on the computer keyboard.
Significance
The keyboard is the primary device for a user to input computer data. The keyboard contains letters, numbers, symbols and function keys. The modern keyboard has 101 keys.
History
The arrangement of the English language keyboard keys is modeled after the QWERTY typewriter keyboard, developed by Christopher Sholes in 1868. Its name was derived from the first six letters at the top left of the keyboard. The QWERTY keyboard is considered to be the standard English language keyboard.
Types
An alternative to the QWERTY keyboard is the Dvorak, developed by Dr. Dvorak in 1936. The most used letters are positioned in the middle row of the keyboard, intending to reduce typing time and finger movement.
Features
The parts of the QWERTY keyboard can be categorized into alphanumeric characters, symbols and function keys. The top row includes the special function keys, beginning with the Esc key (or Escape key). F1 through F12 are also in the top row and perform specific tasks that vary by program.
The majority of keys on the QWERTY keyboard represent letters and numbers. To type a number or lowercase letter, press the desired key. For uppercase letters, keep the Shift key held down while pressing the desired letter. The Shift key is also used to type the symbols located on the number keys.
Identification
The identification of symbols on the keyboard follows:
- Tilde (~)
- Acute/Back Quote/Grave Accent/Left Quote/Open Quote (`)
- Exclamation Point (!)
- At (@)
- Octothorpe/Number/Hash/Pound (#)
- Dollar Sign ($)
- Percent (%)
- Carat or Circumflex (^)
- Ampersand (&)
- Asterisk or Star (*)
- Open/Close Parentheses ( ( ) )
- Hyphen/Minus/Dash (-)
- Underscore (_)
- Plus (+)
- Equal (=)
- Open/Close Braces ({ })
- Open/Close Brackets ([ ])
- Pipe/Or/Vertical bar (|)
- Backslash/Reverse Solidus (\)
- Colon (:)
- Semicolon (;)
- Quote/Quotation Mark/Inverted Commas (")
- Apostrophe/Single Quote (')
- Less Than/Angle Bracket (<)
- Comma (,)
- Greater Than/Angle Bracket (>)
- Period/Dot/Full Stop (.)
- Question Mark (?)
- Forward Slash/Solidus/Virgule/Whack (/)
Additional special function keys are identified as follows:
- PrtSc (with ALT) copies screen to Clipboard
- SysRq is not used today
- Insert - switches between two text-entering modes
- Pause - stops action of current program
- Delete - erases character directly in front of cursor
- Break - stops computer's communications line
- Tab - advances cursor to next tab stop
- Caps Lock - switches between upper and lower case letters
- Ctrl - performs special operations when pressed with another key
- Alt - performs special operations when pressed with another key
- Backspace - moves cursor one position backwards and deletes character
- Enter - causes desired process to begin or moves cursor to next line
- Page Up and Page Down - moves text up and down one screen
- Home and End - jumps to beginning and end of documents
Source:
About the Parts of a Keyboard | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_4569870_parts-keyboard.html#ixzz1N9xnRFIya Keyboard
