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glossary Q
quad
An em. Also called mutton or quad.
queue
An organization of elements that can be removed only in the same order
in which they were inserted. The most common form of queue in computer
use occurs when printing to a laser printer or other high resolution print
device. A queue of documents is a line of documents waiting their turn
to be printed. The first one sent to the printer is the first one that
will be printed and thus removed from the list.
quoin
A small wedge, usually of wood, used for tightening or locking up forms
or galleys in pre-electronic printing.
quoin key
A metal key used to tighten wedge shaped wood quoins to brace and secure
pages of type in preparation to be printed.
QWERTY
The first six letters in the top alphabet row on a typewriter keyboard.
That combination of letters is often used to name the standard keyboard
in contrast to other keyboards. When Sholes made his first typewriters,
he arranged the letters in alphabetical order. Typists found that the
letter bars frequently jammed against each other during typing. Sholes
therefore determined the most often-used combinations of letters and separated
them as widely as possible so they would not get in each other’s way.
The result was today’s QWERTY alpha-numeric keyboard. Sholes made his
keyboard before touch typing had been developed. Most typing was done
by men, and they used the “hunt and peck” system common to those who have
never taken typing courses. For touch typing the QWERTY arrangement is
not the best. It favors left-handed people and makes the typist do much
more work than on other keyboards. In the 1930s a teacher, August Dvorak,
at the University of Washington introduced his Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.
It groups commonly used letters together. Decades later another arrangement
was devised by Lillian Malt and Stephen Hobday in England. It makes typing
easier by tilting the keyboard to accommodate hand and body positions,
and it requires much less dexterity to type. Like the Dvorak keyboard,
however, it has not been adopted. Manufacturers — and computer word
processor makers as well — continue to install the traditional keyboard.
The minimum number of keys on a board is 44. Some of the newest electronic
typewriters have many more. In addition to the letters, there are keys
for numbers. The number keys have other functions when the shift key is
held. Other keyboard features include the space bar, margin stops, a margin
release, tabulator stops, a return key, a shift lock, and a back space.
There are also punctuation keys and assorted keys to make fractions, degree
signs, plus signs, and equal signs. There are special-purpose typewriters
available. It is possible to get machines with type for mathematical and
chemical symbols and for many foreign languages. Oriental typewriters
have been developed in which the paper travels vertically instead of horizontally
after each character is typed. There are braille typewriters for the blind
(see Braille). Teleprompter typewriters print large characters that can
be read from a distance of 20 feet (6 meters) by television performers.
Music publishers use machines that can print musical staffs and notes.