Learn / AZERTY keyboard layout
🇫🇷 AZERTY keyboard layout
AZERTY is the de facto keyboard layout used for French in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and much of francophone Africa, named after the first six letters of its top alphabetic row. It evolved from American QWERTY in France during the last decade of the 19th century, and although it became the cultural default it was never tightly standardized — until the AFNOR NF Z71-300 voluntary standard of 2019 finally fixed the positions of accents, ligatures and symbols. This page explains what AZERTY is, exactly how it differs from QWERTY, its disputed origins, how French diacritics are typed, the documented criticism, and the modern standard.
Practice in the trainerWhat AZERTY is
AZERTY is a layout that arranges the Latin alphabet on keys so that the top alphabetic row reads A-Z-E-R-T-Y, the source of its name. It is the standard physical and software keyboard in France and Belgium, with national variants used across Luxembourg and many French-speaking African countries; the French and Belgian versions differ in detail. Unlike QWERTY, the unshifted top number row produces French-oriented characters (& é " ' ( - è _ ç à), and the digits 0–9 sit on those same keys as the shifted output. The layout was built around the needs of written French rather than English, so several accented vowels have their own dedicated keys. It coexists today with software input methods, but the physical AZERTY keyboard remains the regional default on laptops sold in these markets. Its persistence is largely cultural inertia rather than proven efficiency, a point the 2019 standard set out to address.
How it differs from QWERTY
Four changes define the difference from the US QWERTY layout. First, A and Q are swapped, so the top-left key is A instead of Q. Second, Z and W are swapped, putting Z on the top row and W down near the bottom-left. Third, the M key is moved off the bottom row to sit immediately to the right of L on the home row. Fourth — and most consequential in daily use — the number row is inverted: digits 0 through 9 require holding Shift, while the unshifted keys produce punctuation and accented letters. AZERTY also historically uses Shift Lock rather than a true Caps Lock, which affects non-letter keys differently. The net effect is a keyboard tuned for French letter frequencies and accents, at the cost of making numbers and many programming symbols slower to reach.
History and why it appeared
AZERTY appeared in France in the last decade of the 19th century as a variation on imported American QWERTY typewriters, and it progressively took hold during the first decade of the 1900s. Crucially, its exact origin is unknown — no single inventor or patent is reliably credited, and Wikipedia states plainly that the precise origin is uncertain (treat any confident single-name attribution as disputed). A common error conflates AZERTY with the 1907 layout proposed by French stenography expert Albert Navarre (often summarized as a "ZHJAYS" arrangement), but that was a competing, more radical reform that failed in the market — it was not the AZERTY we use. AZERTY survived largely because of its similarity to the already-familiar QWERTY, which lowered retraining costs. For decades it spread without a binding national standard; AFNOR issued an experimental specification around 1976, but a genuinely fixed, officially published standard did not arrive until 2019.
Diacritics and special symbols
French AZERTY gives direct (single-key) access to the most frequent accented lowercase letters: é, è, à, ù and ç all have their own keys, mostly on the unshifted number row. Less common accents are entered with dead keys: pressing the circumflex key (^) then a vowel yields â/ê/î/ô/û, and Shift plus that key acts as the diaeresis to produce ä/ë/ï/ö/ü. Common symbols sit on the third level via AltGr: @, the euro sign €, curly brackets and the hash all require AltGr on basic AZERTY. The Belgian AZERTY differs here — it exposes a fuller set of accent dead keys (^ ¨ ´ `) and places { and } on AltGr+9 and AltGr+0. Ligatures such as œ and æ were not directly available on the basic layout at all, which is one of the gaps the 2019 standard closes. The capital accented letters (É, Ç, Œ) being hard to reach is the layout’s most criticized flaw.
Honest criticism
AZERTY is widely criticized, including by French institutions, for being poorly suited even to the language it was meant to serve. In January 2016 the French Ministry of Culture publicly stated that AZERTY makes correct French hard to type and launched an effort to fix it. The most cited flaw is uppercase accented letters: capitals like É, Ç and Œ are not directly available on the basic layout or via the default operating-system mapping, so writers frequently omit the accents entirely — a real problem in legal and administrative French, where names are written in full capitals. Everyday symbols are placed inconsistently: the @ and € signs sit behind AltGr. For numbers, the Shift-to-type number row slows numeric entry compared with QWERTY. Importantly, AZERTY is not an ergonomically optimized layout in the way bépo or Dvorak are — its letter placement reflects historical accident more than finger-travel analysis.
The new AFNOR NF Z71-300:2019 standard
After a request from the Ministry of Culture in 2015, AFNOR developed the first real French keyboard standard, NF Z71-300, published in 2019 (note a date discrepancy: AFNOR’s own page now cites 4 March 2019, while contemporaneous coverage cites 2 April 2019 — both refer to the same release). It is explicitly a voluntary standard, not a legal requirement. It defines two layouts. The first is an "improved" or optimized AZERTY: the 26 letters and 10 digits keep their familiar positions, but accented vowels, the @ sign, punctuation, the hash, currency symbols and curly brackets are repositioned, and it finally adds direct access to accented capitals À/É/Ç, guillemets « », and the ligatures Œ/œ and Æ/æ. The second is bépo, an ergonomically optimized alternative. The committee drew on keyboard makers, IT firms, government bodies and human–computer-interaction researchers, and a 2017 public consultation gathered more than 3,000 comments.
How to touch-type on AZERTY
Touch typing on AZERTY follows the same principle as any layout: anchor your fingers on the home row (q-s-d-f for the left hand, j-k-l-m for the right, with index fingers feeling for the F and J bumps) and reach for every other key by muscle memory without looking. Because the number row is shifted, AZERTY touch typists must train the Shift+digit reflex deliberately, and because frequent accents like é, è, à and ç live on that top row, drilling them as first-class characters matters more than on QWERTY. Dead-key accents (^ then a vowel for â/ê, Shift+^ for diaeresis) and AltGr symbols (@, €, {, }) each need their own dedicated practice so the combinations become automatic. TypeRIGHTing supports national layouts — AZERTY (French and Belgian), QWERTZ and QWERTY — with their special characters and accents, so you can build correct finger habits on the exact layout you actually use.
FAQ
Why does AZERTY put numbers behind the Shift key?
On AZERTY the top row defaults to French-oriented characters — punctuation and accented letters such as é, è, à and ç — because those are needed constantly in written French, while the digits 0–9 occupy the shifted level of the same keys. This favours fluent French prose over fast numeric entry, which is one of the layout’s recurring criticisms and a habit AZERTY touch typists must train explicitly.
Who invented AZERTY and when?
No one is reliably credited. AZERTY emerged in France as a variant of American QWERTY typewriters in the last decade of the 19th century and spread in the early 1900s, but its exact origin is genuinely unknown — Wikipedia itself states the origin is uncertain. The 1907 layout by Albert Navarre is sometimes cited, but that was a separate, more radical reform attempt that failed, not AZERTY itself.
What changed with the 2019 AFNOR standard?
NF Z71-300 (published 2019) is a voluntary standard defining an improved AZERTY and the ergonomic bépo. The improved AZERTY keeps letters and digits in place but repositions accents, @, punctuation, # and currency symbols, and finally adds direct access to accented capitals (À, É, Ç) plus the ligatures Œ and Æ that the old layout lacked.
Is AZERTY good for touch typing, and can I practice it?
AZERTY can be touch-typed like any layout, but it is a historical layout rather than an ergonomically optimized one, so structured drilling pays off — especially for Shift+digit numbers, top-row accents and AltGr symbols. TypeRIGHTing supports national layouts including French and Belgian AZERTY with their special characters, letting you build accurate habits on the exact keyboard you use rather than a generic one.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY · afnor.org/en/decryptions/electrotechnologies/french-keyboard-voluntary-standard · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BÉPO · engadget.com (France wants to fix the AZERTY keyboard, 2016) · typingpal.com (QWERTY vs QWERTZ vs AZERTY)