Cut Copy Paste Keys History

By Xah Lee. Date: 2022-06-27.

The X C V for Cut Copy Paste

Another history is the convention of X C V keys for Cut Copy Paste. This came from Apple.

Macintosh Keyboard M0110, Year 1984

Q W
 A S D
  Z X C V

Apple computer, starting with the Macintosh in 1984, made the {undo, cut, copy, paste} concept popular to the masses, and in general the concept of computer keyboard shortcuts. These keys are chosen because they are all adjacent and on the left side of the keyboard, where under them there's the ⌘ command key. Also in this set are Quit Q, Close W, Select All A, Save S, Duplicate D, and Undo Z. The only exceptions are Open O and Print P on the right side of keyboard.

All these keys have become de facto standard on all applications on {Windows, Mac, Linux} today, except the Ctrl+Shift+z for redo and D for Duplicate.