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The German keyboard layout is family of QWERTZ keyboard layouts 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. In English, the letter "y" is very common and the letter "z" is relatively rare, whereas in German the letter "z" is very common and the letter "y" is very uncommon.[1] The German layout places "z" in a position where it can be struck by the index finger, rather than by the weaker little finger.
- Part of the keyboard is adapted to include umlauted vowels (ä, ö, ü) and the sharp s (ß). (Some newer types of German keyboards offer the fixed assignment Alt+++H → ẞ for its capitalized version.)
- 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.)
- 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.