Weird Wednesday Jan. 17: Symbolism in The Top Row

Leon Stevens

Jan 17

[Originally posted on Aug. 25, 2021]

[Rewritten on Jan 17th because it was terrible in it's original form. Don't go there.]

Did you know?

The reason for the conventional configuration was to slow down the rate of typing because the strikers would jam if adjacent keys were pressed too quickly in succession. The most common letters were spread out to eliminate this. There are keyboard configurations that concentrate most frequent letters under the fingers, that reduce effort by 95% and increase speed by 50% but this was done well after the QWERTY set-up was entrenched in the world, and good luck trying to get the whole world on board (just ask the metric system).

Most punctuation is found in the lower section of the keyboard to be easily accessible by the weak fingers of the right hand, leaving the symbols to share space with the numbers on top row of the keyboard (I'm not counting the function keys). The numbers— angry to have all the cuss words as roommates—demanded to also be on the right hand side, and in a fit of defiance, configured themselves backwards to the phone keypad.

Now, since nobody really knows what the symbols mean, here is a handy cheat-sheet for you to print out so that you will never forget the official nomenclature.

The Symbols [crash!] Not Cymbals.

`	The Angry Eyebrow
~	The Kinda/Sorta
!	The OMG
@	The Wrong Symbol for Copyright
#	The Make Up Your Mind, Number, Pound, or Hashtag
$	The Can I Have Some More of This?
%	The I Better Not Have to Calculate That
^	The Funny Hat
&	The Fun to Say and Hear People Ask "The What?"
*	The There's Something Cool at the End
(	The Psst
)	The Did You Catch That?
-	The Take-away or Joiner
_	The Space You Can See
+	The Easier Than %
=	The I'm the Same As

Bonus

—	The How Do You Get That, I Don't See That Symbol on the Keyboard?

-Leon

Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.

My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/