Sure, you know all about the QWERTY keys, how they were developed way back when typewriters were first invented, and jamming all the time. The vowel and consonant keys were therefore configured to slow typing down.

Today, typeahead buffers can handle all we can throw their way -- but we're all handcuffed by this absurd standard. Sure, you can install a Dvorak keyboard, and get around QWERTY. But if you ever need to sit at someone else's keyboard, it will slow you to about 1 character per minute. We are prisoners of QWERTY.

But you've also got computer keys that never appeared on regular typewriters. And there are even keys you thought you understood, like # and @, that have marvelous, pithy stories behind them. Let's climb onto the 60-foot paper-machier keyboard I bought the day after last year's Rose Bowl Parade, and do some exploring:

Function keys. You know, F1, F2, F3, etc. Function keys were developed in the mainframe era by some unknown genius with one foot in the world of software and one in the world of hardware. He felt there were not enough regular keys to perform all the tasks required by existing software, so he created assignable function keys: each one could be programmed to perform a different task, like a macro. They were a boon to techies because they saved data re-entry time. On desktop computers, they first appeared on the Commodore VIC-20, then on the IBM PC, and they were a staple of early programs like WordStar, WordPerfect and dBase2. But average users never warmed to function keys, so when Microsoft created Windows and its mouse-driven interface they made a concerted effort not to go "function key crazy." Instead, they went mouse crazy.

ALT and CTRL. Like function keys, ALT and CTRL were developed to create more keyboard options. But where function keys are programmable -- they can do whatever the user tells them to do -- ALT and CTRL send fixed signals to the processor. They extend the regular set of printable characters to include foreign language characters, bullets, cent-signs, and dingbats.

Slashes. We are familiar with the forward slash (/), also called the stroke. The forward slash (which is the most common used form for division) appeared on manual typewriters. But the first real use of them was in early computers which substituted the forward slash for the ¸ division sign. The backslash, also known as the slosh (\), was added in the 1970s to perform mathematical computations. We use it today to indicate subdirectories.

SysRq. This is a throwback to the IBM 3270 terminals (which your PC can pretend to be, though why you would want it to is a good question. You hit this key when you wanted to get the mainframe's attention: System Request.

Break. This key interrupts any program running in BASIC. Again, it's been a while since BASIC has been a biggie on anyone's wish list, but there it is, still staring you in the face every day.

@ Everyone knows what this is, but no one is sure what to call it. We call it the "at-sign" because it means "at" or "costing," as in "15 bu @ $1.76 ea " It's remarkable that we haven't devised a better name for it than at-sign. I asked Internet users around the world what they call it their languages.

Germans call it Klammeraffe. Norwegians have four names for it: kr°llalfa (curled alpha), grisehale (pig's tail), nabla and at-tegn (at-sign). Swedes call it kanelbulle (cinnamon bun). Danes call it snable a (trunk a). The French call it, variously, a commercial, a enroule (rolled a), and arrobas or arrobasque, which resembles the Chilean arroa. Russians also call it commercial a.

Then there are a bunch of fun spoken names for keyboard characters. You probably know one name, but not the others:

~ tilde, twiddle

! bang, pling, shriek

$ cash, dollar, string

^ caret, up, "hat"

& and, ampersand (in Danish, Anders And, the name there for Donald Duck). Typographers and Latin Scholars know that this is simply the letters e and t ligatured together -- et, meaning and.

| pipe. Now I know what to call it, but I still don't know what to do with it.

* splat, star, splotch

# hash, pound, mesh, scratch, sharp, octothorpe, skigard (Norwegian). I am told it is also the Chinese character for communal farm. This one is very controversial in Great Britain, where they have their own fixed idea about what a "pound sign" should look like.

Then there are some keys that don't appear on your keyboard, but have appeared on other computers over the years. I always wanted to see one known as the Yu-Shiang Whole Fish. It appeared on an early Lisp machine, and it was reserved for very high-level -- I'm talking sky-high here, top-a-the-world-ma -- commands. Way over our heads.

And then there is the legendary Cokebottle key. This was the name programmers gave a key that you desperately need to have in front of you, but no one has yet thought to create.

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