Editor: using either a QWERTY or an AZERTY keyboard affects us all.
Is France's unloved AZERTY keyboard heading for the scrapheap?
By Hugh Schofield
BBC News, Paris
21 January 2016
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| Some, but not all, of the differences are highlighted with the red button |
The AZERTY set-up has infuriated generations of writers,
because of labour-creating peculiarities like the need for two strokes
to make full-stops and numerals.
But official ire is directed
less at such inconveniences, and more at certain quirks and oversights
which, it says, make it hard to construct proper French.
"Today
it is practically impossible to write French correctly using a keyboard
that has been bought in France," the ministry intones.
"More
surprisingly, certain European countries like Germany and Spain respect
French writing better than the French are able to - because their
keyboards permit it!"
The culture ministry has commissioned Paris-based consultancy AFNOR to draw up a list of recommendations by the summer.
The aim is to produce a new standard keyboard that will gradually replace the many varieties of AZERTY currently on the market.
What's wrong with AZERTY?
AZERTY was introduced as a French adaptation of the original QWERTY keyboard on US typewriters at the start of the 20th Century.
The
main problem identified by the culture ministry is the difficulty for
French writers to use "certain accented characters - and especially in
upper-case".
Some common lower-case accented letters - like
é (e-acute) and
è (e-grave) - have dedicated keys on AZERTY.
The letter
ù (u-grave) also has its own key, even though it is used in only one word in the entire French language -
où, meaning where.
But
other accented letters are harder to compose. And accented capital
letters require manoeuvres of which, according to the ministry, most
people are unaware.
This ignorance, and the consequent growing
disuse of accented capitals, has given rise to the widespread belief
that good French does not need them. Most people think that ignoring an
accent on a capital letter is acceptable.
Not so! says the culture
ministry, pointing out that both the Academie Francaise and the
National Print have issued guidelines urging the use of accents on
capitals.
A similar absence is that of a
Ç - a
capital C-cedilla, with the curly bit beneath signifying that it is
pronounced like an 's'. Again the ministry says people think it is not
necessary, but it is.
Likewise the two "ligatures" -
æ and
œ - the latter particularly common in words like
œil (eye) and
œuf (egg). Neither is accessible on the keyboard.
The
ministry also laments the absence of what it says are the correct signs
for introducing direct speech in French - the double chevrons
« and
», as opposed to the inverted commas used in English.
And it wants to make it easier to write in regional French languages, like Occitan, Catalan, Breton and Polynesian.
So symbols like the tilde (the squiggle on a
ñ), the interpunct (mid-line dot, used in Catalan), and the macron (bar above a vowel -
ā -indicating length) all need to be readily available.
Ergonomically disastrous
Some enthusiasts are backing the BEPO keyboard, which is based on a statistical study of French
"The idea is not to impose anything, but simply to
make it possible for people to obey the rules," says Philippe
Magnabosco, who is running the project at AFNOR.
"Right now, there is a big discrepancy between French grammar and the possibilities offered by the keyboard."
One
thing the recommendations are unlikely to change is the AZERTY
configuration itself - this despite the fact that most agree it is
ergonomically disastrous.
No-one knows who first devised AZERTY,
but it took hold in the last decade of the 19th Century. It is a lightly
modified version of the QWERTY keyboard which was patented in the US 20
years earlier.
More than a century ago, there were calls for a ZHJAY keyboard to be introduced
Over the years different analysts have pointed out
that the lay-out makes little sense for French. The home-row (or middle
letter-bar - the most accessible) contains too many uncommon letters;
and the left hand is over-used.
Plus there is the nonsense of having to go into upper-case mode to write full-stops and numbers.
As early as 1907 an alternative arrangement was proposed (ZHJAY).
Today some enthusiasts are pushing for another (BEPO).
But writing habits are by now too deeply ingrained.
Some changes are coming, but A-Z-E-R-T-Y is most likely here to stay.
