The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row. The shift key's name originated from the typewriter, where one had to press and hold the button to shift up the case stamp to change to capital letters; the shift key was first used in the Remington No. 2 Type-Writer of 1878; the No. 1 model was capital-only.
On the US layout and similar keyboard layouts, characters that typically require the use of the shift key include the parentheses, the question mark, the exclamation point, and the colon.
When the caps lock key is engaged, the shift key can be used to type lowercase letters on many operating systems, but not Mac OS X.
Read more about Shift Key: Labeling, Uses On Computer Keyboards, Windows Specific
Famous quotes containing the words shift and/or key:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)