Appendix talk:English writing device keyboards

Numerous letters

I have already said that the sentence "The most numerous group of keys is those corresponding to letters of the alphabet." is inaccurate. This is a simple and harmless fact, so you might have merely trusted me or ignored me, after all.

Well, I'm going to remove that sentence again, simply because it is false. Let me elaborate my argument into four facts; the fifth fact is only placed here due to cosmetical value, it doesn't count:

1. A "group of keys" is very, very subjective concept. One could argue that "keys of the first row of QWERTY keyboards" is a group, or that "keys that can be normally used with Shift when typing text" is another group, or that "keys whose name begin with e" is another group. You seem to base the group of "letters" on the appearance of the glyphs, which is just as random as the other groups that I mentioned.
2. Mentioning the "most numerous group" is simply not helpful and not informative. (By the way, creating a list of many groups of keys and their quantities of members would be more helpful and more informative, but also probably outside the scope of Wiktionary.) One very good approach for the Appendix:English writing device keyboards would be using headers such as "Letters", "Function keys", etc. and list members under them, while disregarding their quantities.
3. If we consider every sense of a key, including repetitions like "backspace, backspace key, bksp, BkSp, bk sp, Bk Sp" together as individual keys, then I suppose we have 52 senses of letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. (Because people can say either "Press A" or "press a".) Then, I can easily form another, very narrow, group named "keys that move the cursor", that also contains 52 members, or maybe a little more:

   right arrow, right arrow key, right, right key, left arrow, left arrow key, left, left key, up arrow, up arrow key, up, up key, down arrow, down arrow key, down, down key, Right Arrow, Right Arrow key, Right, Right key, Left Arrow, Left Arrow key, Left, Left key, Up Arrow, Up Arrow key, Up, Up key, Down Arrow, Down Arrow Key, Down, Down key, home, Home, home key, Home key, end, End, end key, End key, Page Down, PageDown, page down, pagedown, pgdn, PgDn, Page Up, page up, page up, pageup, pgup, PgUp, pg up, Pg Up.

4. We may, differently, ignore repetive senses. For example, we may consider that "backspace, backspace key, bksp, BkSp, bk sp, Bk Sp" are just one key, a backspace. In this case, we have merely 26 buttons of letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, without counting the redundant versions of different cases. Then, with this circumstance in mind, I am also able to mention a group of more than different 26 keys and name it "function keys":

   F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9, F10, F11, F12, F13, F14, F15, F16, F17, F18, F19, F20, F21, F22, F23, F24, PF1, PF2, PF3, PF4, Help key, Search key.

5. I may even list the category of "modifiers and locks", that is less narrow and whose keys have more obscure boundaries (Are Meta and Windows the same key? Or not?) but is very useful:

   Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Compose, Fn, AltGr, Cmd, Windows, Cmd, Meta, Super, Option, Hyper, Meta, Amiga, Symbol Shift, Caps Shift, Top, Front, Multi, Caps Lock, Num Lock, Scroll Lock, F-Lock, Office Lock, Insert.

In my examples, I'm not counting the buttons of videogames, because they are clearly off the scope of the appendix. More importantly, in the item 3, I'm not counting the keys that move the cursor and do something else simultaneously, like Enter, Backspace, Tab, space and all the letters and numbers and punctuations into that group.

--Daniel. 08:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

On Earth humans form natural groups based on their own shared experience. The experience of learning the alphabetical and numerical keys as a group is a common one. For historical reasons alone, the alphabetical keys form a group. If you cannot see this perhaps you might try asking any humans of various age groups that you may know and listening to what they say. DCDuring TALK 11:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Please don't speak for the whole species. The way you did that now, it gives the the strong impression that you are dismissing the fact that humans on Earth are able to form and recognize groups beyond blatantly limitated boundaries such as "the alphabet and nothing more". Or, perhaps, that are you ignoring the historical value of function keys. Or, that are you assuming that humans don't share the experience of knowing what cursors or function keys are, or they don't ever speak about it with themselves. Or, that your target audience are readers who can't distinguish technical differences of certain groups of keys of keyboards of computers, which would be unwise for a page named "English writing device keyboards". There are many bad possibilities. I'd rather choose simple logic, as I explained above; after all, this is a skill that humans use and appreciate. --Daniel. 11:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

You have made unwarranted inferences from my statement. I was simply trying to assert the naturalness of "alphabetical keys" or "alphanumeric keys" as a grouping. That people can also form other groupings is obvious. But one normally presents information beginning with what is likely to be shared between writer and reader. Natural conceptual groupings are an instance of this. DCDuring TALK 11:41, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Your most recent message of this thread conflicts with repeatedly placing the sentence "The most numerous group of keys is those corresponding to letters of the alphabet." at Appendix:English writing device keyboards.

Either the most numerous group of keys is those corresponding to letters of the alphabet or it is obvious that people can also form other groupings, if the "other groupings" can be more numerous than the group of keys corresponding to letters of the alphabet.

The current revision of the appendix in question already presents information that is likely to be shared between writer and reader without mentioning an untrue statement about letters. --Daniel. 11:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)