I was at work today staring at my keyboard instead of doing work when I noticed the return key (enter key) was touching the backslash key above. You can see this little bridge that extends between the two keys over the gap that is normally between most other keys. After I thought about it, several laptops I’ve owned or used all had this little quirk.

This struck me as odd. It looks reminiscent of the big L shaped return keys you would see on older keyboards or the standalone keyboards for desktop PCs. But I’m not sure exactly what the purpose of that little bridge is for. And thus I fell down the massive rabbit hole of computer keyboard layouts. I feel like I need to preface this with a disclaimer that I am not a keyboard enthusiast or a typing enthusiast. I know there are plenty of communities out there with very strong opinions on keyboard formats and layouts. So think of this as a sort of “outsider’s perspective”. 

So my initial thought was that maybe this is some sort of touch cue. For example, the F and J keys on a lot of keyboards have little bumps on them called homing bars. They serve as a position indicator for typers who want to type fast without having to look at the keyboard. Maybe the bridge between the return key and the backslash was to create a different shape profile to help typers differentiate it from the shift key below, since both the enter key and the shift key are long rectangles. But as I move my fingers across the enter key and the backslash key, I couldn’t actually feel the bridged gap, as the height of the keys prevent my fingers from actually touching the part that matters. The identifying factor was more so the fact that the shift key was way longer. 

There has to be a practical reason for this right? It can’t just be purely for visual aesthetics. Well let’s find out. So in America, the common laptop keyboard format is the ANSI 101/104 format. On most modern computers, this means a rectangle return key with the backslash key above it. ISO keyboards, which are most commonly used in every other part of the world (besides Japan who use JIS), instead have a larger enter key that looks more like an upside down fat L. ISO keyboards will vary a lot more from country to country to fit the needs of the residents who live there. Since the return key is essentially two normal keys tall on ISO keyboards, it will usually take the place of the backslash key. The backslash key will thus be either moved to the spot bottom left of the return key, or moved all the way to the left of the Z key, shortening the shift key on the far left. There are also scenarios where the backslash key is omitted altogether. Again, this is all dependent on exactly where the keyboard is from. 

Overall, ISO keyboards are cringe. But we have a precedent for a L shaped enter key now. It’s the complete wrong size and orientation though. The ANSI return key + backslash key creates a mirrored L shape while the ISO return key is more like a fat upside down L. ANSI keyboards have a variant commonly found on older desktop keyboards. The variant return key has the profile of what our backslash+enter would look like: a backwards L. To my delight there is a name for this return key among the keyboard community. They have dubbed it the “Bigass enter”. The shape of the bigass is more closely in line with the actual symbol of the return key, an arrow shaped like a backwards L.

In this scenario, the backslash key is instead moved to the row where all the number keys reside. The backspace is thus shortened to make room for the extra key. So it’s likely the bridge gap between the backslash and the rectangle return key is a relic from that.

But that doesn’t answer the question, why is that still here? One post on reddit suggested that it’s a cost saving method. They claim that rather than have two separate molds for the entire keyboard frame AND the keys themselves, it’s easier to just have one dual purpose mold for the keyboard frame with a large L shaped hole that would work for either the L shape or rectangle shaped keys. You would only need separate molds for the keys themselves in this situation. But this implies that both keyboard layouts are currently being manufactured and produced. So this explanation doesn’t seem to hold up for several reasons. First of all, the “other keyboard layout” mentioned doesn’t appear to exist. I looked through a lot of online photos of laptop keyboards and I could not find a single one that uses the backwards L format. It’s all either the ISO key or the rectangle ANSI key. Another piece of evidence that suggests the backwards L format doesn’t exist on laptops is that the backspace is too small. For the L return key to fit, the backslash key would have to have to be moved. The backspace would thus need to be truncated to make room. On my laptop at least, the backspace key is already pretty short, barely a key and a half length long. The more likely scenario is the backslash moving below to become neighbors with the shift key. But as far as I can tell, there is no precedent for that. I’ve looked at my specific laptop model and the rectangular return key appears to be consistent across every variation I can find. There are no use cases of the backwards L return key. Yet on every version, the bridge between the backslash and the return key is present. 

Modern laptops have every opportunity to change the manufacturing design of the keyboard, yet it appears the bridge between the return key and the backslash key is fully intentional. It’s on far too many computers of various designs for it to be just a leftover relic that we haven’t changed from. Once again, it could be a purely visual thing, but that feels like such an odd inclusion. Surely it can’t be worth the hassle. So this bridge between the return key and backslash remains to be a puzzle to me even now. I really thought I would have found a proper answer by the end of this, but every potential lead I found ended up being an incomplete answer.