The Italian keyboard layout is the keyboard layout commonly used on computers in Italy. It is QWERTY-based and follows the ISO/IEC 9995 standard. Italian-speaking people in Switzerland on the contrary use the Swiss QWERTZ keyboard with Swiss Italian layout.
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The Italian keyboard layout on Microsoft Windows lacks the uppercase letters with accents that are used in Italian language: À, È, É, Ì, Ò, and Ù. [note 1] As such diacritics are normally used only on word-final vowels, this deficiency is usually overcome by using normal capital letters followed by apostrophe ('), e.g. E' instead of È, although this practice is disparaged by language purists. Anyhow, most of modern word processors and text editors include autocorrection tools that change automatically the apostrophe into the correct accent when Italian language check is enabled.
On the contrary, this issue is not present under Linux, where the capital letters with accent are available by just enabling Caps Lock and pressing the corresponding lowercase accented letter.
Despite the lack of uppercase accented vowels, the Italian layout has no dead keys.
Some of the keys are usually labeled in Italian, although Italian keyboards with English labels are available as well. Keys Alt, Alt Gr, Ctrl, Ins and Tab do not change, while the following labels are in Italian language:
| Italian label | English equivalent |
|---|---|
| ⇪ Bloc Maiusc | ⇪ Caps Lock |
| Bloc Num | Num Lock |
| Bloc Scorr | Scroll Lock |
| Canc | Delete |
| Fine | End |
| Inizio or ⬉ | Home |
| ↵ Invio | ↵ Enter |
| ⇧ Maiusc | ⇧ Shift |
| Pag🠕 | Page Up |
| Pag🠗 | Page Down |
| Pausa | Pause |
| Stamp | Print Screen |
Italian keyboard layout on Windows also does not include all ASCII characters, as it lacks the backtick (`) and tilde (~). On Linux, they can be typed by pressing AltGr+⇧ Shift+' and AltGr+⇧ Shift+ì respectively.
Moreover, the layout includes the lowercase letter C with cedilla (ç) which is not used in the Italian language.
