German keyboard layout

The German keyboard layout is a QWERTZ keyboard layout commonly used in Austria and Germany. It is based on one defined in a former edition (October 1988) of the German standard DIN 2137-2. The current edition DIN 2137-1:2012-06 standardizes it as the first (basic) one of three layouts, calling it "T1" (Tastaturbelegung 1, "keyboard layout 1").

The German layout differs from the English (US and UK) layouts in four major ways:

• The positions of the "Z" and "Y" keys are switched. A possible reason is that to enable German manufacturers to circumvent patents which included the QWERTY layout, at least one position had to be changed, which could be achieved by moving the "Z" (which is a much more common letter in German than the "Y") to a more prominent location. Another explanation for switching the keys would be: In English, the letter “Y” is used quite frequently, purely, academically, vitally, importantly and also in many other adverbs. On the other hand, in German, the letter “Z” is used very frequently, the “Y” hardly ever. Therefore, it is sensible to reverse the positions on the keyboard. Words such as zu, Zeit. wozu, implizit,zünftig, Zulage, Zulassung are found frequently, while there are only 13 words in the Y section of an average German dictionary.
• Part of the keyboard is adapted to include umlauted vowels (ä, ö, ü) and the sharp-S (ß).
• Some of special key inscriptions are changed to a graphical symbol (e.g. ⇪ Caps Lock is an upward arrow, ← Backspace a leftward arrow). Most of the other abbreviations are replaced by German abbreviations (thus e.g. "Ctrl" is translated to its German equivalent "Strg", for Steuerung). "Esc" remains as such. (See: "Key labels" below)
• Like many other non-American keyboards, German keyboards change the right Alt key into an Alt Gr key to access a third level of key assignments. This is necessary because the umlauts and some other special characters leave no room to have all the special symbols of ASCII, needed by programmers among others, available on the first or second (shifted) levels without unduly increasing the size of the keyboard.

General information

Computer keyboard with German keyboard layout T2 according to DIN 2137-1:2012-06

German keyboard layout "T1" according to DIN 2137-1:2012-06

German keyboard layout "T2" according to DIN 2137-1:2012-06.

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Clickable image: Click on any symbol to open the Wikipedia article on that symbol.

The characters ², ³, {, [, ], }, \, @, |, µ, ~ (and, since the late 1990s, €) are accessed by holding the AltGr key and tapping the other key. The Alt key on the left will not access these additional characters. Alternatively Ctrl+Alt and pressing the respective key also produce the alternative characters on some operating systems.

The accent keys ^, ', ' are dead keys: press and release an accent key, then press a letter key to produce accented characters (ô, á, ù, etc.; the current DIN 2137-1:2012-06 extends this for e.g. ń, ś etc.). If the entered combination is not encoded in Unicode by a single code point (precomposed character), most current implementations cause the display of a free-standing (spacing) version of the accent followed by the unaccented base letter. For users with insufficient typing skills this behaviour (which is explicitly not compliant with the current DIN 2137-1:2012-06) leads to mistype a spacing accent instead of an apostrophe (e.g., it´s instead of correctly it's).^[1]

Note that the semicolon and colon are accessed by using the ⇧ Shift key.

The "T1" layout lacks some important characters like the German-style quotation marks („“ and ‚‘). As a consequence, these are seldom used in internet communication and usually replaced by " and '.

The "T2" layout newly defined in DIN 2137-1:2012-06 was designed to overcome such restrictions, but firstly to enable typing of other languages written in the Latin script. Therefore, it contains several additional diacritical marks and punctuation characters, including the full set of German, English, and French-style quotation marks in addition to the typographic apostrophe, the prime, the double prime, and the ʻokina.

The image shows characters to be entered using AltGr in the lower left corner of each key depiction (characters not contained in the "T1" layout are marked red). Diacritical marks are marked by a flat rectangle which also indicates the position of the diacritical mark relative to the base letter.

The characters shown at the right border of a keytop are accessed by first pressing a dead key sequence of AltGr plus the × multiplication sign. This X-like symbol may be thought of as an "extra" dead key or "extra" accent type, used to access "miscellaneous" letters that do not have a specific accent type like diaeresis or circumflex. Symbols on the right border shown in green have both upper-case and lower-case forms; the corresponding capital letter is available by pressing the Shift key simultaneously with the symbol key. For instance, to type the lower-case æ ligature, hold the AltGr key and type ×, then release both keys and type the (unshifted) A key. To type the upper-case Æ ligature, hold the AltGr key and type ×, then release both keys, hold Shift and type the (shifted) A key. An active Caps Lock can be used instead of the Shift key to obtain the Æ ligature and similar letters.

In addition, DIN 2137-1:2012-06 defines a layout "T3", which is a superset of "T2" incorporating the whole "secondary group" as defined in ISO/IEC 9995-3:2010. Thus, it enables to write several minority languages (e.g. Sami) and transliterations, but is more difficult to comprehend than the "T2" layout, and therefore not expected to be accepted by a broad audience beyond experts who need this functionality.

History

Keyboard of an Adler typewriter Modell № 7, produced about 1899–1920 in Frankfurt

Keyboard of a mechanical typewriter, produced 1964 by Olympia Werke, Germany. The key with four dots is the margin release.^[2] The arrow key under Tab ↹ is the backspace key,^[3] which is pointing in the direction the paper would move rather than the way a cursor would move (as on a modern computer keyboard).

Detail of a keyboard of a German IBM Portable PC 5155, produced about 1984–85

See also

• ISO/IEC 9995

Notes and references