Keep Your Fingers Crossed

Depression of a keyboard key; formulas (such as using Control keys to insert a frequently used phrase) that use fewer keystrokes make a typing job faster.

A children's drawing and painting program for Macintosh, from Broderbund Software.

A benchmark program for testing a machine's CPU, I/O and floating point performance.

A memory area that stores keystrokes when a typist is too fast, to allow the program to catch up.

A set of keys for computer input, which resembles a typewriter keyboard, but with a few extra keys for computer commands and usually a numeric keypad added. The original typewriter keys worked mechanically to make a metal hammer with a raised, inked type character on it strike a page. On a computer keyboard, hitting on a key sends an electrical signal to a microprocessor, which sends a scan code to the computer's basic input/output system. The BIOS translates the scan code into an ASCII code that stands for a character, which is read by the operating system or program so the character appears on the screen.

An email pen pal. Some World Wide Web sites provide the service of helping people find keypals who share their interests.

A small keyboard; usually refers to the keys on a calculator or the numerical keypad on a computer keyboard, which can be used with a calculator desktop utility.

Entering data by typing on a keyboard.

Commands given by pressing keys on the keyboard; most keyboard commands require two keys pressed at once, and some require three or four keys pressed at once. For example, control-B, alt-G, command-shift-I.