What Is Above The Number 2 On The UK Keyboard Layout?

I was reading this article from Wikipeida on keyboard layouts

If you look at the UK Keyboard layout image right above the number two is a symbol. What is that?

It looks like a period when I zoom the image but is it? It seems redundant if it is, as there is already a period on the bottom row of keys

thanks

It’s a quotation mark. As in "

It’s a: "

There’s no period on a UK keyboard. We have a full stop instead. :wink:

Ah I see they swapped the @ and the " keys

Thanks

Actually, they left it where it was originally. (It’s swapped on US style computer keyboards, although the typewriter retained the quote in that position.)

Why the at symbol was given a more prominent place on the keyboard is left as an exercise for the reader.

I like that over the 3 they replaced the pound sign with…a pound sign. :slight_smile:
What is above the single quote and what is it used for? EDIT: The one over the TAB key.

No idea what it’s for, but it’s one of these: ¬

It’s the negation symbol.

Wow, they wasted a whole key for that?

It’s ‘¬’ which I only know as the logical symbol for ‘negation’. E.g. if A is a statement then ¬A is it’s negation.

I had to look ‘¦’ up. It seems it’s sometimes used as an alternative for displaying the absolute value of a number e.g. ¦-2¦ = 2

More commonly a “pipe,” under Unix. (And where DOS cribs from UNIX.)

Actually, no. It’s the “broken bar” sign (¦), which is a different character from the “or sign” or “pipe” (|). If you look, the normal solid pipe also appears on the UK layout, as the shift of backslash, located next to the Z key.

ETA:

The normal pipe is ASCII 124 (dec), the broken pipe is extended ASCII 166 (dec)

Well, there’d be a funny gap otherwise! :slight_smile:

When did the at-sign migrate to above the two? I remember on computers in the 80s (at least on the Commodore), it was shift-two. And is it only on the US layout that it’s above the two?

ETA: It looks like the Apple IIe had the at-sign above the two already. Hmm…Wonder who the first was to put it there.

ETA2: Apple II plus had it the quotes above the two.