Earlier computer keyboards were based either on teletype machines or keypunches. By the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, all computers used electronic keyboards. The layout of the computer keyboard still owes its origin to the inventor of the first typewriter, Christopher Latham Sholes. He also invented the QWERTY layout, and laid out the keys in such a way that common two-letter combinations were placed on opposite sides of the keyboard so that his mechanical keyboard would not jam.
| . | full stop (International) | period (American) |
| , | comma |
| ? | question mark |
| ! | exclamation mark or bang |
| : | colon |
| ; | semicolon |
| – | hyphen, en dash |
| _ | underscore |
| ( and ) | parentheses |
| [ and ] | brackets |
| { and } | braces or curly brackets |
| ‘ | apostrophe or single quotation mark |
| ” and “ | quotation marks |
| / | (forward) slash or ‘virgule’ (line break when quoting text), divide symbol |
| ¶ | the pilcrow or paragraph symbol |
| § | the section symbol |
| & | the ampersand |
| @ | the ‘at’ symbol or ampersat |
| ^ | caret |
| # | the number sign (‘hash’ symbol UK or ‘pound’ symbol US) |
| <> | angle brackets, less than and greater than signs |
| ¦ | broken bar |
| | | bar (or pipe for the unix geeks) |
| \ | backslash |
| * | asterisk (or splat for the geeks), multiply symbol |
| ~ | tilde |
| % | percent sign |
| $ | Dollar sign |
| € | Euro sign |
| £ | Pound Sterling sign |
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