2016-01-21 09:32:36
By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
France's 100 year-old AZERTY keyboard - the equivalent of the English-language
QWERTY - is to be reconfigured after the government ruled that it encourages
bad writing.
The AZERTY set-up has infuriated generations of writers, because of
labour-creating peculiarities like the need for two strokes to make full-stops
and numerals.
But official ire is directed less at such inconveniences, and more at certain
quirks and oversights which, it says, make it hard to construct proper French.
"Today it is practically impossible to write French correctly using a keyboard
that has been bought in France," the ministry intones.
"More surprisingly, certain European countries like Germany and Spain respect
French writing better than the French are able to - because their keyboards
permit it!"
The culture ministry has commissioned Paris-based consultancy AFNOR to draw up
a list of recommendations by the summer.
The aim is to produce a new standard keyboard that will gradually replace the
many varieties of AZERTY currently on the market.
What's wrong with AZERTY?
Image copyright Getty Images
AZERTY was introduced as a French adaptation of the original QWERTY keyboard on
US typewriters at the start of the 20th Century.
The main problem identified by the culture ministry is the difficulty for
French writers to use "certain accented characters - and especially in
upper-case".
Some common lower-case accented letters - like (e-acute) and (e-grave) -
have dedicated keys on AZERTY.
The letter (u-grave) also has its own key, even though it is used in only one
word in the entire French language - o , meaning where.
But other accented letters are harder to compose. And accented capital letters
require manoeuvres of which, according to the ministry, most people are
unaware.
This ignorance, and the consequent growing disuse of accented capitals, has
given rise to the widespread belief that good French does not need them. Most
people think that ignoring an accent on a capital letter is acceptable.
Not so! says the culture ministry, pointing out that both the Academie
Francaise and the National Print have issued guidelines urging the use of
accents on capitals.
A similar absence is that of a - a capital C-cedilla, with the curly bit
beneath signifying that it is pronounced like an 's'. Again the ministry says
people think it is not necessary, but it is.
Likewise the two "ligatures" - and - the latter particularly common in
words like il (eye) and uf (egg). Neither is accessible on the keyboard.
The ministry also laments the absence of what it says are the correct signs for
introducing direct speech in French - the double chevrons and , as opposed
to the inverted commas used in English.
And it wants to make it easier to write in regional French languages, like
Occitan, Catalan, Breton and Polynesian.
So symbols like the tilde (the squiggle on a ), the interpunct (mid-line dot,
used in Catalan), and the macron (bar above a vowel - ā -indicating length) all
need to be readily available.
Ergonomically disastrous
"The idea is not to impose anything, but simply to make it possible for people
to obey the rules," says Philippe Magnabosco, who is running the project at
AFNOR.
"Right now, there is a big discrepancy between French grammar and the
possibilities offered by the keyboard."
One thing the recommendations are unlikely to change is the AZERTY
configuration itself - this despite the fact that most agree it is
ergonomically disastrous.
No-one knows who first devised AZERTY, but it took hold in the last decade of
the 19th Century. It is a lightly modified version of the QWERTY keyboard which
was patented in the US 20 years earlier.
Over the years different analysts have pointed out that the lay-out makes
little sense for French. The home-row (or middle letter-bar - the most
accessible) contains too many uncommon letters; and the left hand is over-used.
Plus there is the nonsense of having to go into upper-case mode to write
full-stops and numbers.
As early as 1907 an alternative arrangement was proposed (ZHJAY).
Today some enthusiasts are pushing for another (BEPO).
But writing habits are by now too deeply ingrained.
Some changes are coming, but A-Z-E-R-T-Y is most likely here to stay.