Keyboard Glossary
Every mechanical keyboard term in plain language, from actuation force and bottom-out to Tsangan, long poles and group buys.
This hobby runs on jargon, much of it undefined anywhere and some of it used to mean two different things by different people. Everything below is written to be read on its own, so you can arrive from a product listing, find the one word you did not know, and leave.
Where a term has a whole article behind it, the definition links to it.
0-9
1800, 96%: a layout with every key of a full-size board but the gaps removed, so the number pad sits against the arrows. All the keys, much less width, and the hardest layout to buy keycaps for.
40%, 60%, 65%, 75%, X%: a keyboard’s size as a rough percentage of a full-size board’s width. Treat it as an approximation rather than a key count: a 60 percent board has 61 of 104 keys, which is 59 percent, but a 40 percent has about 45 percent of them.
A
ABS: acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, one of the two plastics keycaps are made from. Takes colour and crisp legends better than PBT and is the material used for doubleshot moulding. Develops a smooth shine where your fingers land, usually within months.
Actuation force: the weight needed to press a key far enough to register, in grams-force (gf). Across the switches indexed here the published figures run from 32 to 60 gf, and most keyboards land between 45 and 55.
Alice: a layout with the two halves of the keyboard angled inward on a single board, so your wrists stay straighter without separating the halves. Easier to adopt than a split board because the key stagger is still the familiar one.
ANSI: the American standard layout, with a wide horizontal enter key and a long left shift. The default for most keycap sets, and incompatible with ISO boards without an extra kit.
Artisan: a single keycap made in small numbers, usually hand-cast resin and usually sculptural, sold as a decorative replacement for one key. Prices run from tens to hundreds of dollars and have nothing to do with typing.
B
Band-aid mod: sticking a small square of adhesive plaster to the PCB underneath a stabilizer housing, so the housing lands on something soft. A last resort after lubing and clipping, and most boards do not need it.
Bottom-out force: the weight at the very bottom of a key’s travel, as distinct from the force needed to register it. The more useful figure of the two if you bottom out every key, and only 25 of the 48 switches indexed here publish it at all.
BoW: black on white. Black legends on white keycaps. See also WoB.
C
Cherry MX: the switch design almost every other switch copies, made by Cherry since the 1980s. Its patent expiring is why the custom keyboard hobby exists in its current form, and why switches from dozens of makers all fit the same keycaps.
Cherry profile: the most common keycap profile, sculpted and relatively low. If a keycap set is described only by a designer and a colourway, it is usually this.
Clicky switch: a switch with a tactile bump plus a mechanism that makes a deliberate sharp click, produced either by a collar around the stem or a sprung bar in the housing. Loud on purpose.
Clipping: cutting the small feet off the underside of a stabilizer stem with flush cutters, so it no longer ticks against the circuit board. Irreversible, and the single biggest improvement you can make to a stabilizer.
D
Doubleshot: moulding a keycap twice so the legend is a separate piece of plastic all the way through. It cannot wear off, and it is why ABS sets from GMK dominate the hobby.
DSA: a uniform keycap profile with flat, spherically dished tops. Any cap fits any row, which makes it the usual choice for ortholinear and split boards.
Dye-sublimation, dye-sub: printing keycap legends by dyeing them into the surface of the plastic with heat, so they are chemically part of the cap. Permanent, and the standard for PBT. Cannot print a light legend onto a dark cap.
E
Extras: units of a group buy product made beyond the pre-orders, sold afterwards at a higher price. Often the only way to buy something that ran years ago.
F
Factory lube: lubricant applied to a switch before it leaves the factory. Quality is inconsistent: applied well it makes the switch smooth out of the box, applied unevenly it makes some keys feel gritty and others fine.
Films: thin gaskets, usually 0.15 to 0.3 mm, placed between a switch’s top and bottom housing to take up slack in a loose fit. Worth it on switches whose housings rattle, pointless on those that already fit tightly.
Flex cuts: slots machined into a plate away from the switch holes, so the typing surface bends more easily. They also make a plate reverberate more rather than less, which is the part rarely mentioned.
Frankenswitch: a switch assembled from two different switches’ parts, to get a combination nobody sells. The famous one is the Holy Panda, a Halo stem in a Panda housing.
Full-size, 100%: the standard 104-key layout with a number pad. Unfashionable in this hobby and the correct answer for anyone who types numbers in columns.
G
Gasket mount: a mounting style where the plate is held by compressed strips of rubber or foam rather than screwed to the case, so the whole typing surface can move slightly. The softest and quietest common mount, and currently the most fashionable.
GMK: a German manufacturer of ABS doubleshot keycaps in Cherry profile, using tooling descended from Cherry’s own. Lead times routinely exceed a year. See GMK.
Group buy: a pre-order that only proceeds if enough people commit, which is how most custom keyboards and keycaps are sold. Waits of six to eighteen months are normal. See how group buys work.
H
Hall effect, HE: a switch that senses a magnet’s position rather than closing a metal contact, so nothing touches and the press can be read as a continuous value rather than on or off. Needs a board built for it, and is not MX compatible.
HHKB layout: a 60 percent variant with a shorter right shift, the extra key moved beside it, and a 6u spacebar. Named after the Happy Hacking Keyboard.
Hot-swap: a circuit board with sockets, so switches push in and pull out by hand instead of being soldered. Buy this on a first board: it turns changing switches from a two-hour job into a ten-minute one.
Housing: the plastic shell of a switch, in two parts. The top housing takes the upstroke impact and sets how much the stem wobbles; the bottom housing takes the downstroke and holds the metal leaf. Its material does more to a switch’s sound than anything else.
I
Integrated plate: a case whose plate and top half are one piece of metal, so there is no join and nothing to flex. The stiffest possible mount, and the plate cannot be changed because it is the case.
Interest check, IC: a designer publishing a proposed product to gauge demand before committing to manufacture. The stage before a group buy, and the stage at which feedback still changes the product.
ISO: the layout standard used across much of Europe, with a tall L-shaped enter, a shorter left shift and an extra key. ANSI keycap sets do not fit it without an international kit.
K
KAM: a uniform keycap profile in PBT, made by Keyreative. Cherry-like tops, one height for every row.
KAT: a sculpted keycap profile in PBT, made by Keyreative, slightly deeper dished than Cherry.
Keyset: a complete set of keycaps sharing a profile, plastic and colourway, sold divided into kits.
Kit: a subset of a keyset covering particular keys, such as a base kit for a standard layout or a spacebar kit. What a set’s kits cover decides whether it can fill your board, and it is the thing people fail to check.
Krytox: a fluorinated lubricant line made by Chemours, originally for aerospace use. 205g0 is the default switch and stabilizer grease; 105 is the thin oil used on springs. See switch lubes.
L
Layer: a complete second set of key assignments, reached by holding a modifier. How a small board has a function row and arrow keys without having the keys. See remapping a keyboard.
Leaf: the folded strip of springy metal inside a switch’s bottom housing whose two arms touch to register the keypress. The only part of a switch that does electrical work, and the one part lubricant must never reach.
Legend: the character or symbol printed on a keycap. How it got there, doubleshot, dye-sub or pad print, decides whether it will still be there in five years.
Linear switch: a switch whose force rises smoothly all the way down, with no bump and no click. The largest group in this index and the usual recommendation for gaming.
Long pole: a switch stem extended so it reaches the bottom housing sooner, shortening the travel and sharpening the bottom-out. How most of the current generation gets its crisp, loud sound, and why so many switches now list 3.5 mm of travel rather than 4.
M
Macropad: a small standalone board of a few keys, used alongside a keyboard for shortcuts, or on its own as a first build because it is cheap and fast to assemble.
Minimum order quantity, MOQ: the number of units a factory requires before it will run a production job. The reason group buys exist and the reason they sometimes fail.
Mounting style: how a keyboard’s plate and circuit board are held in the case, from rigid to suspended. Affects flex and sound more than the case material does. See mounting styles.
N
Numpad: the calculator block on the right of a full-size keyboard. The first region removed as layouts get smaller, and the one nobody who uses it should give up.
O
OEM: original equipment manufacturer, a company that makes products sold under someone else’s name. Also the name of a keycap profile, slightly taller than Cherry, which is what most prebuilt keyboards ship with.
Ortholinear: a layout with keys in a perfect grid rather than staggered rows. The stagger on a normal keyboard is inherited from typewriter linkages, and ortholinear boards reject it. Takes a couple of weeks to relearn.
P
PBT: polybutylene terephthalate, the other keycap plastic. Faintly textured, resists shine almost indefinitely, sounds deeper than ABS, and takes legends less sharply.
PCB: the printed circuit board that reads the switches and talks to the computer. Either hot-swap, with sockets, or solder, with none.
Plate: a sheet with a hole for every switch, sitting between the switches and the circuit board. Keeps switches aligned and takes the force out of typing, and its material sets both the stiffness and the pitch. See plate materials.
POM: polyoxymethylene, a slippery hard plastic. The overwhelming favourite for switch stems because it is self-lubricating, and occasionally used for keycaps and plates.
Pre-built: a finished keyboard bought assembled, as opposed to a kit. Buy a hot-swap one for a first board.
Pre-travel: how far a key moves before it registers, in millimetres. Around 2 mm is standard; anything under about 1.5 mm is sold as a speed switch for gaming, at the cost of triggering more easily under a resting hand.
Profile: a keycap’s shape and height. Sculpted profiles give each row a different angle and cannot be rearranged; uniform profiles make every key identical and can. See keycaps.
Proxy: a regional vendor who takes part of a group buy’s order so buyers in that region pay local shipping and import duty once rather than individually.
Q
QMK: the open-source firmware most custom keyboards run, which is what makes every key reassignable and layers possible. VIA is a configurator that talks to it without compiling anything.
R
Reverse dye-sublimation: dyeing everything on a keycap except the legend, which is how a light legend is printed on a dark PBT cap. Harder than ordinary dye-sub, which is why those sets cost more.
Round 2, R2: a second production run of a keycap set or keyboard that sold out. Often the only chance to buy something you missed.
S
SA: a tall, rounded, sculpted keycap profile from Signature Plastics. Distinctive, retro, and genuinely divisive.
Sculpted profile: a keycap set where each row has a different height and angle, forming a shallow bowl. Rows are not interchangeable, so you cannot rearrange the letters.
Silent switch: a switch with rubber or silicone pads on the stem so it does not strike bare plastic at either end. Much quieter, and slightly soft at the bottom, because something compressible now sits where the plastic used to stop.
Southpaw: a layout with the number pad on the left, so a right-handed mouse sits closer to the keyboard. Rare, and the correct answer for anyone whose shoulder hurts from reaching.
Split keyboard: two separate halves joined by a cable, so each hand sits where it naturally falls. The layout change with the clearest ergonomic argument behind it.
Spring ping: a faint metallic ringing on a key’s return, from an uncoated spring. Most audible on an otherwise quiet board, and fixed by a drop of thin lubricant on the spring ends.
Stabilizer, stab: the sprung wire and two dummy housings that keep a long key level, on anything 2u or wider. A rattling one is the most audible fault a board can have and the cheapest to fix. See stabilizers.
Stem: the moving part of a switch, carrying the cross that keycaps push onto. Its side profile decides whether the switch is linear or tactile, and its material decides how smooth the travel feels.
T
Tactile switch: a switch with a bump on the stem that you push past at or just before the point the key registers. The word covers everything from a faint rise to something that feels like a fault in the key.
Tenkeyless, TKL: a full-size layout minus the number pad, about 80 percent of the width. The safe choice if nothing else about layouts appeals to you.
Total travel: how far a key moves from rest to the bottom. The MX standard is 4 mm, but 3.5 mm is now unremarkable and shorter travel is part of how current switches sound sharper.
TriboSys: a lubricant line whose 3203 and 3204 grades are thinner than Krytox 205g0, which is the point on a tactile switch where a thick grease would round off the bump. See TriboSys.
Tsangan: a bottom row using 1.5u modifiers and a 7u spacebar, very common in custom kits and incompatible with a keycap set that only includes a 6.25u spacebar.
U
u, unit: the width of one letter key, which is 19.05 mm of key spacing. Every other key is a multiple: Tab is 1.5u, a standard spacebar 6.25u. See keycap sizes.
Uniform profile: a keycap set where every key is the same shape and height, so any cap fits any row. The only case where you can freely rearrange your letters.
V
Vendor: a shop selling keyboards and parts, sometimes also running group buys, sometimes also selling products under its own name.
VIA: an application that configures a QMK keyboard live, with no firmware to compile or flash. See remapping a keyboard.
W
WKL, winkeyless: a Tsangan bottom row with the Windows keys removed, leaving a blank space either side of the spacebar. An aesthetic inherited from older boards.
WoB: white on black. White legends on black keycaps. See also BoW.