There are really many ways to get information into your computer. New high-tech toys are announced every day, from scanners and cameras, to light pens, joysticks, microphones, even lowly mice. But these devices are best for copying data into the computer. When getting creative, the keyboard is the way that you will get most of the information into the computer. Only one hidden tip for the more experienced users, this is mostly a beginner's article - Mick Topping (May-02)

Overview - Most people have a fair amount of familiarity with the keyboard-A, B, C…x, y, z… 1,2,3…because these are the keys that cause words etc to be printed on the screen and paper. You press the key, and it causes that character to appear in your document. But there are other strange keys on the keyboard that may be a little weird to the beginner. The diagram below shows a typical layout. Most keyboards purchased recently will have all the keys shown here. Many manufacturers will include an extra, brand-specific family of buttons for particular functions, such as "Internet controls" or "Microsoft Office". But these special buttons are not essential for typical operation. Your keyboard will probably be similar to this layout, however it is not likely to be identical. Some of these keys work as a Toggle, like the Caps Lock key. Press and it turns on a special mode, press again, and that mode turns off-these keys usually have a light at the top of the keyboard to show when they are on.

Ordinary Character typing keys - There is not much to say about these keys. When you press one of these, a corresponding character appears on the screen. I include the shift key in this group because it is usually understood as a standard typewriter key, but it is also appropriate to call it a "modifier" key. It is held down while another key is pressed to modify the other key result, but the result is still a printable, viewable, character.

Function Modifier Keys - Primarily the Alt, Ctrl, and Windows ( ) keys. These keys are used like the shift key, (hold down Ctrl etc while pressing another key) but the results are a different category. These key-combinations issue commands to the computer operating system or the program, which is currently in running on your computer. Ctrl and Alt can be used together in compound modifier fashion, with Ctrl-Alt-Del being the main example. Shift really should be included in this group, because it can be used in combination with the other modifier keys. The Esc (escape) key is an older modifier key that was used as a prefix key. In the old days it was used before the key to modify, but in windows its primary function is that of a command-cancel key. That means if you have clicked into a sub-menu that you do not want to execute, the Esc key will frequently bail you out from that menu.

Cursor movement keys- These keys are used during text entry to move the entry point for typing text. The Arrow keys move the entry-point cursor left and right one character, or to the previous or next line of text. The other cursor movement keys are usually pretty consistent in their function (home/end moves to the beginning/end of the line, and PgUp/PgDn go to previous/next page) but small variations in the actions may show up in some applications. When working with your favorite word-processing applications, test these keys to make sure how they work. Remember to check out how these keys are modified by the Ctrl, Shift and Alt keys. For example, in MS Word, the Ctrl-left/right Arrows move to the beginning of the previous/next word, and the Ctrl-Up/Down Arrows move to the previous/next paragraph, and Ctrl-Home/End goes to the beginning or end of the document. As you can see, these functions can also be accomplished with the mouse, but after you learn the shortcut, the keyboard is much faster. Also the arrow keys are frequently used for moving items such as graphics that have been selected. If you have a really old keyboard it may not have the cursor-movement keys--these functions were done by the Numeric Key-pad keys with the Num-Lock was set to off.

Numeric Keypad Keys - These keys are primarily interesting to those folks who favor the old 10-key calculator for entering numbers. This section is a fair replica of those old calculators whenever the num-lock is on. One other use for these keys, mainly of interest to geeks and nerds is the ability to enter special characters. For example, by holding down the Alt key and typing 3 digits from the numeric pad, produces characters like ¿ or ¢ or £… Usually these character sets, are pretty standard, but not always. My laptop produces unexpected characters from this trick, but most keyboards will respond to the codes here http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/charset/

Delete and Insert keys - These 3 keys are very important, and are sometimes confusing to beginners. The Backspace is one of my favorites (I like to call it the oops key) because I make a lot of mistakes. It rubs-out (deletes) the character to the left of the insert point. This is usually the character(s) you just typed, but you can move the cursor back to the middle of an earlier paragraph (with the Up-Arrow for example) and delete a string of characters to the left of the cursor with Backspace. Backspace/Delete keys (like many keys) will start to repeat if held down. The Delete (or Del) key deletes the character to the right of the cursor. When the cursor is in the middle of text, and you type more characters, there are 2 possibilities-1) is that the characters to the right may be moved out of the way, the other is that they could be typed-over, or deleted to make room for the newly typed letters. The Insert key is a toggle type key, but usually does not have a light associated, because it does not set something in the keyboard. Instead, it is a signal to the current program about how to respond to typing-either the insert, or type-over mode. If you switch to another program, this mode does not transfer, and some applications like Notepad do not respond to the Insert key at all.

Numeric Function keys - These keys, F1 through F12 are generally reserved for individual application use. In one program, F7 may exit the program, in another it may open a new window. The only exception that I know of is the F1 key which is used to launch a HELP window in 95% of Windows applications. (I nearly always learn something in doing the research for these articles-this time I learned that Word2000 has a "Function key toolbar", accessible through Tools-customize-toolbars--cool. Don't forget to press the Ctrl, Shift, and Alt keys to watch this toolbar change.)

System keys-
On the upper right side of the keyboard are several keys that finish the job of giving keystroke commands to the computer. The function of Num Lock, Scroll Lock, Pause, and Break vary somewhat with individual programs, usually Num Lock controls the use of the numeric key-pad, Scroll Lock changes the way the arrow keys work, pause and break are mostly historical interest, as they can sometimes stop run-away programs, but they rarely help in Windows. The PrintScreen key on the other hand is very useful. It is used to capture an image of the screen and send it to the clipboard. Alt-PrintScreen captures only the active program window to the clipboard. These images can then be pasted into a graphic-receptive program such as Word Pad, Word, or Paint… for saving or printing. This is a very nifty tool for saving and sharing an illustration of what is happening with a program.