On British Keyboard
Yesterday Erin took you through the signs and symbols that you will find on your computer keyboard. She even explained the name for each symbol. Another element she mentioned is that there are different keyboards for different countries.
If you have ever sat down at a computer whilst in the United Kingdom and tried to type an email, you probably ran into a few frustrations. That’s because the UK keyboard, while very similar to the American one, has a few differences.
If the only issue you have is that is that Shift-3 should be # then a solution is to change the input source to Australian rather than British. This is a duplicate of my answer on Stack Overflow. I assume that you have a Mac UK keyboard so Shift-3 is £. On most other keyboards Shift-3 is # as others have said. The way I get round it is to change the input source to Australian the only. The first and most obvious is that a Mac keyboard doesn't have a Windows key. More accurately, it doesn't have a key with the Windows symbol on it, but the one marked command or cmd acts as one. To install the keyboard layout for another language on a British PC running Windows: Start - Settings - Control Panel - Keyboard - Language or Input Locales - Add; select language and click OK A program can be downloaded for free which will allow you to display a virtual keyboard on the screen which shows the places of the new letters on the.
The United Kingdom and Ireland use a keyboard layout based on the 48-key version defined in British Standard BS 4822. I’ve included the American keyboard and the UK keyboard below, so you can take a look at the differences. To be honest, the differences are so few and minor that identifying them might feel a bit like some of those “spot 5 differences” images you may have completed as a kid.
United Kingdom Keyboard
I’ve included a list of the main differences below for you but one of the first differences you might have seen is that the UK enter key is a little bit bigger. You might have also noticed that some of our symbols are in different places. The one people notice the most are the “@” symbol, which is to the left of the enter key. While the quotation mark makes it way over to above the number 2.
British Keyboard Layout Vs American
The pound symbol, which we actually call a hash rather than pound, is also moved closer to the enter key giving us a space for the currency symbol of the British Pound.
Backslash British Keyboard
Main differences between a US and UK keyboard:
Us Keyboard Vs Uk Keyboard
- an AltGr key is added to the right of the space bar
- the # symbol is replaced by the £ symbol and a 102nd key is added next to the Enter key to accommodate the displaced #
- @ and ” are swapped
- the ~ is moved to the # key, and is replaced by a ¬ symbol on the backquote (`) key
- the key is moved to the left of the Z key
- the Enter key spans two rows, and is narrower to accommodate the # key
- on laptop computers, the and key is often placed next to the space bar