deskthority

Why is it that on most key caps the letters are printed off centre? In a minority of key caps they are nicely centred, linke on (most?) DSA and SA keys, and on Apple laptops. But on most other ones they are printed in the corner.

This is the RIGHT way

But this is what you see mostly. Why ?

Centered letters were the status quo in the 70s and with older typewriters, so I guess (and partly remember) that the left-aligned look just looked more fresh, elegant and modern when it came up in the 80's.

Also, I think that centered legends don't look good with small font sizes, so if you don't like the huge letters of old times, you more or less automatically begin to adjust them to the left.

your fingers don't cover the whole letter if the legend is top-left (I don't know, it's just a guess).

Pad printing and lasered legends last longer if you don't press on them all the time, so they offset them to the corner, that's my guess!

The only reason is to put 3 or 4 legends on the cap (like APL symbols or cyrillic).

you can see the letter more clearly when fingers are at rest if they are off centre i prefer centre printer as well however

i think the cheap printing lasting longer is also a posibility but then again model F/M had it and i don't see anyone wearing out dyesub

The corner indicates which modifier (combo) is needed to get that symbol. While letter keys produce lower-case letters without any modifier, the tradition had been to print upper-case letters on letter keys.
So, the upper-case legends are in the upper left corner because you get those with Shift.

I think it was DEC who started the trend with having the legends left-aligned / upper left corner on the DEC LK201. Now, it did not have any Alt key though...
I haven't used an original IBM PC since the '80s, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the left Alt could have been used as Alt Gr originally. Some early non-English layouts on the Model F and clones had the English layout symbol in the right columns and I think it was through Alt that they were accessed. Amiga did it that way anyway and I think they had copied IBM.

I vaguely remember someone around here digging up an ancient ISO standard that actually mentioned this. But I don't remember if that standard actually stated its reason for preferring left aligned legends.

7bit has the most practical explanation, though Halvar is probably more accurate! Buckling spring keyboards still look stunningly different to their beamspring ancestors. A lot of that is because of the hugely reduced thickness of the "low profile" Model F and M boards. But never underestimate the caps. IBM went top left aligned dyesub Helvetica at the same time as they went to PBT cylindricals. Previously, their beamspring keyboards were much like their Selectric typewriters: centre legend doubleshot ABS, in hokey "SP" style font. Well, a little better, but no Helvetica.

Anyway, the extra space for secondary and tertiary legends does help on my SSK. The integrated numpad is nice and subtle, much like on modern Realforce TKLs.

I’m not sure who was first to do this, but like all other aspects of modern keyboards, this was popularized by IBM, with the goal of supporting international keyboards which needed multiple legends per keycap. Then at some point it was turned into a European standard, because the Germans absolutely love turning tiny arbitrary details into universal mandates.

Muirium wrote: Previously, their beamspring keyboards were much like their Selectric typewriters: centre legend doubleshot ABS, in hokey "SP" style font. Well, a little better, but no Helvetica.

By which you mean like 1000x prettier than Helvetica, right!?

(To be fair, keyboard legends, posters, and corporate logos are pretty much the only appropriate places for using Helvetica, which is absolutely awful for typesetting extended text. But even so, Helvetica was played already in the 70s, and its ubiquity reflects widespread poor typographic taste and disrespect for both elegance and legibility. Helvetica is pretty much what you’d get if you asked a committee of corporate lawyers to design a typeface.)

My love for Helvetica is genuine, and unlimited!



The K always gives it away too. As does the G in his speech…

I mean sure, Helvetica (boring corporatized played out typeface that it is) is still better than Arial (its stolen half-assed imitator, created so Microsoft could avoid paying the proper licensing fees), but that’s not saying anything.

The LK201 was in 1982, and left-aligned legends on keycaps dates back at least to 1978 and the IBM Electronic Typewriter 50/60.