Quirky Qwerty: A Biography of the Typewriter and Its Many Characters

by Torbjorn Lundmark

This charming book whisks the reader through a fascinating, lighthearted history of an object most people take for granted: the keyboard. Recounting the development of "Qwerty," the modern typing system millions use everyday-named for the first six letters on the keyboard, Q.W.E.R.T.Y.-Torbjörn Lundmark taps out a neat archaeology of each letter and symbol and brings the discussion into the twenty-first century by addressing the role of punctuation in the digital age. Lundmark's vast knowledge, solid research, and friendly, digestible style make this a perfect book for both the casual word-buff and the experienced linguist.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Language, Reference, Design, Technology

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

Reviews

[Megan]

This bizarre little book was kind of disappointing. It was supposed to be the history of the Qwerty keyboard, but Mr. Lundmark covered that in about eight pages at the beginning and filled the rest with really tacky puns, worn out fontplay, common-knowledge trivia, and some Simple Wikipedia-basic history on each and every letter on the keyboard from Egyptian times to the present. Perhaps he shouldn't have claimed to be writing a history of the keyboard when his primary focus was on the alphabet itself, because the most relation the book had to Qwerty was that he went over each letter in the order it appears on the standard keyboard. Anyway, it wasn't that bad, kind of harmless, I guess; if you didn't already know that stuff, you'd be entertained for awhile. I already knew it all, so I just found it boring.

[Cassandra]

I enjoyed learning a bit of the history of each letter. There was some history of the typewriter as a general overview at the beginning but not as in depth as I thought it would be for a book claiming to be the "Biography of the Typewriter". All in all I did enjoy this book. It can be a quick on sitting read, though I read only a segment at a time, drawing it out.

[Rahni]

Though a short book, it still exceeded my interest in the subject. Or, rather, I am still interested in the keyboard, but the tangents into how each letter came to be shaped the way it is made the last half of the book a struggle (for me) to get through.

[Bruno]

Fun, light and much broader and informative than expected. While the history of QWERTY is indeed covered, most of the book is about the history and evolution of letterforms, going all the way back to Egypt. I’ve been a type nerd for decades, but still learned plenty new.

[Hannah Currie]

Really fascinating! Loved hearing the history of different letters of the English alphabet as well as other interesting language facts.

[Ron Wade]

2.5 rounded up to 3 stars.

[alana]

This bizarrely structured and strangely written book features some interesting looks into the origin and evolution of capital and lower-case letters as well as puncutation marks. The section on the development of the typewriter is quite brief.

[Pancha]

Very brief, and skirted far too close to the overly-glib type of humor I dislike. But it was okay.

[Rogue Reader]

Odd facts and findings on the English alphabet mostly, and a good history of the typewriter