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ANSI keyboard (United States)

ISO keyboard (Europe)

An initiative born from a collective need

The vast majority of developed countries use QWERTY or QWERTZ keyboard layouts that are pretty similar to the American QWERTY. France is the exception with its AZERTY layout which differs radically from the American QWERTY in terms of letter placement and, above all, punctuation and symbols placement. On top of that, the French AZERTY does not give access to essential characters of the French language (accented capital letters, French quotation marks, etc.).

French-speaking countries also have completely different keyboard layouts: French AZERTY is similar to Belgian AZERTY but is very different from Swiss QWERTZ and French Canadian QWERTY. A common QWERTY layout for the whole French-speaking world would therefore have many professional and economic advantages.

A multilingual layout designed with programming in mind

As the American QWERTY is an international reference for developers, with its easily accessible programming symbols and keyboard shortcuts, it's essential to have a keyboard layout similar to the American QWERTY but adapted for French and its neighboring languages.

The three main accented letters of the French language (É È À) thus have their own keys on the three main rows, and the main accents (acute, grave, circumflex, umlaut, tilde) used in many languages are easily accessible.

An intuitive, easy-to-use solution

QWERTY French slightly modifies the American QWERTY to fit French symbols and accents, while retaining the properties that have made it so popular with expatriates and developers. So you can easily use QWERTY French on any keyboard without using stickers, as many keyboards are only available in ANSI format (different from the ISO format used in Europe) with American QWERTY lettering on the keys.

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