Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "Q".  There really aren't that many "Q" words that are directly related to social media so I opted for one that most of us English typing bloggers are familiar with on a daily basis, the QWERTY keyboard layout.

"Q" is for Qwerty

Qwerty

Pronounced: Kwur-tee

QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top first row of letters. The QWERTY design was patented by Christopher Sholes in 1874 and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first appeared in typewriters.

Several alternatives to QWERTY have been developed over the years, claimed by their designers and users to be more efficient, intuitive and ergonomic; however, none of them are in widespread use, and studies are inconclusive as to whether they actually offer any real benefits. The most widely used such alternative is the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, which comes with all modern computer operating systems. A more recent alternative is Colemak.