document_title: QWERTY

question_text: who invented the order of letters on a keyboard

question_tokens: who invented the order of letters on a keyboard

text: QWERTY

text: The keyboard before QWERTY[edit]

text: In 1840's, Hughes Printing Telegraph arranged the keys like a piano keyboard.

text:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N

.
Z
Y
X
W
V
U
T
S
R
Q
P
O

text: History[edit]

text: The QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé.[1]

text: The first model constructed by Sholes used a piano-like keyboard with two rows of characters arranged alphabetically as shown below:[1]

text:
- 3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M

text: The construction of the "Type Writer" had two flaws that made the product susceptible to jams. Firstly, characters were mounted on metal arms or type bars, which would clash and jam if neighbouring arms were pressed at the same time or in rapid succession. Secondly, its printing point was located beneath the paper carriage, invisible to the operator, a so-called "up-stroke" design. Consequently, jams were especially serious, because the typist could only discover the mishap by raising the carriage to inspect what had been typed. The solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs (like "th" or "st") so that their type bars were not neighbouring, avoiding jams.[2]

text: Sholes struggled for the next five years to perfect his invention, making many trial-and-error rearrangements of the original machine's alphabetical key arrangement. The study of bigram (letter-pair) frequency by educator Amos Densmore, brother of the financial backer James Densmore, is believed to have influenced the array of letters, but the contribution was later called into question.[3] Others suggest instead that the letter groupings evolved from telegraph operators' feedback.[4]

text: In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the latter half of the alphabet, O to Z, right-to-left.[5] In April 1870 he arrived at a four-row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard, moving six vowel letters, A, E, I, O, U, and Y, to the upper row as follows:[6]

text:
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -
    A E I . ? Y U O ,
B C D F G H J K L M
Z X W V T S R Q P N

text: In 1873 Sholes's backer, James Densmore, successfully sold the manufacturing rights for the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer to E. Remington and Sons. The keyboard layout was finalized within a few months by Remington's mechanics and was ultimately presented:[7]

text:
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - ,
Q W E . T Y I U O P
Z S D F G H J K L M
A X & C V B N ? ; R

text: After they purchased the device, Remington made several adjustments, creating a keyboard with essentially the modern QWERTY layout. These adjustments included placing the "R" key in the place previously allotted to the period key. Apocryphal claims that this change was made to let salesmen impress customers by pecking out the brand name "TYPE WRITER QUOTE" from one keyboard row are not formally substantiated.[7] Vestiges of the original alphabetical layout remained in the "home row" sequence DFGHJKL.[8]

text: The modern layout is:

text:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
Q W E R T Y U I O P [ ] \
A S D F G H J K L ; '
Z X C V B N M , . /

text: The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, the first typewriter to include both upper and lower case letters, using a shift key.

text: Differences from modern layout[edit]

text: Substituting characters[edit]

text: The QWERTY layout depicted in Sholes's 1878 patent is slightly different from the modern layout, most notably in the absence of the numerals 0 and 1, with each of the remaining numerals shifted one position to the left of their modern counterparts. The letter M is located at the end of the third row to the right of the letter L rather than on the fourth row to the right of the N, the letters X and C are reversed, and most punctuation marks are in different positions or are missing entirely.[9] 0 and 1 were omitted to simplify the design and reduce the manufacturing and maintenance costs; they were chosen specifically because they were "redundant" and could be recreated using other keys. Typists who learned on these machines learned the habit of using the uppercase letter I (or lowercase letter L) for the digit one, and the uppercase O for the zero.[10]

text: Combined characters[edit]

text: In early designs, some characters were produced by printing two symbols with the carriage in the same position. For instance, the exclamation point, which shares a key with the numeral 1 on modern keyboards, could be reproduced by using a three-stroke combination of an apostrophe, a backspace, and a period. A semicolon (;) was produced by printing a comma (,) over a colon (:). As the backspace key is slow in simple mechanical typewriters (the carriage was heavy and optimized to move in the opposite direction), a more professional approach was to block the carriage by pressing and holding the space bar while printing all characters that needed to be in a shared position. To make this possible, the carriage was designed to advance forward only after releasing the space bar.

text: The 0 key was added and standardized in its modern position early in the history of the typewriter, but the 1 and exclamation point were left off some typewriter keyboards into the 1970s.[11]

text: Contemporary alternatives[edit]

text: There were no particular technological requirements for the QWERTY layout,[7] since at the time there were ways to make a typewriter without the "up-stroke" typebar mechanism that had required it to be devised. Not only were there rival machines with "down-stroke" and "frontstroke" positions that gave a visible printing point, the problem of typebar clashes could be circumvented completely: examples include Thomas Edison's 1872 electric print-wheel device which later became the basis for Teletype machines; Lucien Stephen Crandall's typewriter (the second to come onto the American market) whose type was arranged on a cylindrical sleeve; the Hammond typewriter of 1887 which used a semi-circular "type-shuttle" of hardened rubber (later light metal); and the Blickensderfer typewriter of 1893 which used a type wheel. The early Blickensderfer's "Ideal" keyboard was also non-QWERTY, instead having the sequence "DHIATENSOR" in the home row, these 10 letters being capable of composing 70% of the words in the English language.[12]

text: Properties[edit]

text: Alternating hands while typing is a desirable trait in a keyboard design. While one hand types a letter, the other hand can prepare to type the next letter, making the process faster and more efficient. However, when a string of letters is typed with the same hand, the chances of stuttering[clarification needed] are increased and a rhythm can be broken, thus decreasing speed and increasing errors and fatigue. In the QWERTY layout many more words can be spelled using only the left hand than the right hand. In fact, thousands of English words can be spelled using only the left hand, while only a couple of hundred words can be typed using only the right hand[13] (the three most frequent letters in the English language, ETA, are all typed with the left hand). In addition, more typing strokes are done with the left hand in the QWERTY layout. This is helpful for left-handed people but to the disadvantage of right-handed people.

text: Contrary to popular belief, the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down,[5] but rather to speed up typing by preventing jams. Indeed, there is evidence that, aside from the issue of jamming, placing often-used keys farther apart increases typing speed, because it encourages alternation between the hands.[14] There is another origin story in the Smithsonian that the QWERTY keyboard was made for telegraph operators and has this layout to make it easy for the telegraph operator to work.[14][15][16] (On the other hand, in the German keyboard the Z has been moved between the T and the U to help type the frequent bigraphs TZ and ZU in that language.) Almost every word in the English language contains at least one vowel letter, but on the QWERTY keyboard only the vowel letter "A" is located on the home row, which requires the typist's fingers to leave the home row for most words.

text: A feature much less commented-on than the order of the keys is that the keys do not form a rectangular grid, but rather each column slants diagonally. This is because of the mechanical linkages – each key is attached to a lever, and hence the offset prevents the levers from running into each other – and has been retained in most electronic keyboards. Some keyboards, such as the Kinesis or TypeMatrix, retain the QWERTY layout but arrange the keys in vertical columns, to reduce unnecessary lateral finger motion.[17][18]

text: The words 'typewriter', 'proprietor', 'perpetuity', and 'repertoire' (from French) are the longest English words that can be written using only the keys in the top row.

text: Computer keyboards[edit]

text: The first computer terminals such as the Teletype were typewriters that could produce and be controlled by various computer codes. These used the QWERTY layouts and added keys such as escape (ESC) which had special meanings to computers. Later keyboards added function keys and arrow keys. Since the standardization of PC-compatible computers and Windows after the 1980s, most full-sized computer keyboards have followed this standard (see drawing at right). This layout has a separate numeric keypad for data entry at the right, 12 function keys across the top, and a cursor section to the right and center with keys for Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down with cursor arrows in an inverted-T shape.[19]

text: Diacritical marks and international variants[edit]

text: Different computer operating systems have methods of support for input of different languages such as Chinese, Hebrew or Arabic. QWERTY is designed for English, a language with diacritical marks appearing only in a few words of foreign origin. QWERTY keyboards have no standard way of typing an accent. Until recently, no norm was defined for a standard QWERTY keyboard layout allowing the typing of accented characters. The so called "US-International layout" is, in fact, OS-dependent. There exist other layouts that try to overcome this shortcoming. One popular is EurKEY which is available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

text: Depending on the operating system and sometimes the application program being used, there are many ways to generate Latin characters with accents independently of the layout in use.

text: Other keys and characters[edit]

text: International variants[edit]

text: Minor changes to the arrangement are made for other languages. There are a large number of different keyboard layouts used for different languages written in Latin script. They can be divided into three main families according to where the Q, A, Z, M, and Y keys are placed on the keyboard. These are usually named after the first six letters.

text: Canadian[edit]

text: English-speaking Canadians have traditionally most often used the same keyboard layout as in the United States, unless they are in a position where they have to write French on a regular basis. French-speaking Canadians respectively have favoured the Canadian French keyboard layout (see below).

text: Canadian Multilingual Standard[edit]

text: The Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard layout is used by some Canadians. Though this keyboard lacks the caret (^) character, this is easily accomplished by typing the circumflex accent followed by a space.

text: Canadian French[edit]

text: This keyboard layout is commonly used in Canada by French-speaking Canadians. It is the most common layout for laptops and stand-alone keyboards targeting French speakers. Unlike the French layout used in France and Belgium, the Canadian French layout is a true QWERTY and as such is also relatively commonly used by English speakers in the US and Canada (using standard QWERTY keyboards) for easy access to accented letters found in some of the French words commonly used in English. It can be used to type all accented French characters, as well as some from other languages. It also serves all English functions as well. It is popular mainly because of its close similarity to the basic US keyboard commonly used by English-speaking Canadians and Americans, historical use of US-made typewriters by French-Canadians, and is the standard for keyboards in Quebec. Use of the European French layout in Quebec is practically unheard of.

text: In some variants of this keyboard ⇪ Caps Lock is ⇪ Fix Maj (short for Fix Majuscule = Lock Upper Case) or ⇪ Verr Maj (short for Verrouiller Majuscule = Lock Upper Case), ↵ Enter is ↵ Entrée,[20] and Esc is Échap.

text: Czech (QWERTY)[edit]

text: The typewriter came to the Czech-speaking area in the late 19th century, when it was part of Austria-Hungary where German was the dominant language of administration. Therefore, Czech typewriters have the QWERTZ layout. However, with the introduction of imported computers, especially since the 1990s, the QWERTY keyboard layout is frequently used for computer keyboards, too. Czech QWERTY layout differs from QWERTZ in that the characters (e.g. @$& and others) missing from the Czech keyboard are accessible with AltGr on the same keys where they are located on an American keyboard. In Czech QWERTZ keyboard the position of these characters accessed through AltGr differs.

text: Danish[edit]

text: Both the Danish and Norwegian keyboards include dedicated keys for the letters Å/å, Æ/æ and Ø/ø, but the placement is a little different, as the Æ and Ø keys are swapped on the Norwegian layout. (The Finnish–Swedish keyboard is also largely similar to the Norwegian layout, but the Ø and Æ are replaced with Ö and Ä. On some systems, the Danish keyboard may allow typing Ö/ö and Ä/ä by holding the AltGr or ⌥ Option key while striking Ø and Æ, respectively.)

text: Dutch (Netherlands)[edit]

text: Though it is seldom used (most Dutch keyboards use US International layout),[21] the Dutch layout uses QWERTY but has additions for the € sign, the diaresis (¨), and the braces ({ }) as well as different locations for other symbols. An older version contained a single-stroke key for the Dutch character IJ/ij, which is usually typed by the combination of I and J. In the 1990s, there was a version with the now-obsolete florin sign (Dutch: guldenteken) for IBM PCs. In Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), "AZERTY" keyboards are used instead, due to influence from the French-speaking part of Belgium.

text: Estonian[edit]

text: The keyboard layout used in Estonia is virtually the same as the Swedish layout. The main difference is that the Å and ¨ keys (to the right of P) are replaced with Ü and Õ respectively (the latter letter being the most distinguishing feature of the Estonian alphabet). Some special symbols and dead keys are also moved around.

text: Faroese[edit]

text: Basically the same as the Danish layout with added Đ, since the Faroe Islands are a self-governed part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

text: Finnish multilingual[edit]

text: The visual layout used in Finland is basically the same as the Swedish layout. This is practical, as Finnish and Swedish share the special characters Ä/ä and Ö/ö, and while the Swedish Å/å is unnecessary for writing Finnish, it is needed by Swedish-speaking Finns.

text: As of 2008, there is a new standard for the Finnish multilingual keyboard layout, developed as part of a localization project by CSC. All the engravings of the traditional Finnish–Swedish visual layout have been retained, so there is no need to change the hardware, but the functionality has been extended considerably, as additional characters (e.g., Æ/æ, Ə/ə, Ʒ/ʒ) are available through the AltGr key, as well as dead keys, which allow typing a wide variety of letters with diacritics (e.g., Ç/ç, Ǥ/ǥ, Ǯ/ǯ).[22][23]

text: Based on the Latin letter repertory included in the Multilingual European Subset No. 2 (MES-2) of the Unicode standard, the layout has three main objectives. First, it provides for easy entering of text in both Finnish and Swedish, the two official languages of Finland, using the familiar keyboard layout but adding some advanced punctuation options, such as dashes, typographical quotation marks, and the non-breaking space (NBSP).

text: Second, it is designed to offer an indirect but intuitive way to enter the special letters and diacritics needed by the other three Nordic national languages (Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic) as well as the regional and minority languages (Northern Sámi, Southern Sámi, Lule Sámi, Inari Sámi, Skolt Sámi, Romani language as spoken in Finland, Faroese, Kalaallisut also known as Greenlandic, and German).

text: As a third objective, it allows for relatively easy entering of particularly names (of persons, places or products) in a variety of European languages using a more or less extended Latin alphabet, such as the official languages of the European Union (excluding Bulgarian and Greek). Some letters, like Ł/ł needed for Slavic languages, are accessed by a special "overstrike" key combination acting like a dead key.[24] However, the Romanian letters Ș/ș and Ț/ț (S/s and T/t with comma below) are not supported; the presumption is that Ş/ş and Ţ/ţ (with cedilla) suffice as surrogates.

text: Greek[edit]

text:
The stress accents, indicated in red, are produced by pressing that key (or shifted key) followed by an appropriate vowel.
Use of the "AltGr" key may produce the characters shown in blue.

text: Icelandic[edit]

text: The Icelandic keyboard layout is different from the standard QWERTY keyboard because the Icelandic alphabet has some special letters, most of which it shares with the other Nordic countries: Þ/þ, Ð/ð, Æ/æ, and Ö/ö. (Æ/æ also occurs in Norwegian, Danish and Faroese, Ð/ð in Faroese, and Ö/ö in Swedish, Finnish and Estonian. In Norwegian Ö/ö could be substituted for Ø/Ø which is the same sound/letter and is widely understood).

text: The letters Á/á, Ý/ý, Ú/ú, Í/í, and É/é are produced by first pressing the ´ dead key and then the corresponding letter. The Nordic letters Å/å and Ä/ä can be produced by first pressing °, located below the Esc key, and ⇧ Shift+° (for ¨) which also works for the non-Nordic ÿ, Ü/ü, Ï/ï, and Ë/ë. These letters are not used natively in Icelandic, but may have been implemented for ease of communication in other Nordic languages.[citation needed] Additional diacritics may be found behind the AltGr key: AltGr++ for ˋ (grave accent) and AltGr+´ for ˆ (circumflex).

text: Irish[edit]

text: Microsoft Windows includes a Gaelic layout which supports acute accents with AltGr for the Irish language and grave accents with the ` dead key for Scottish Gaelic. The other Insular Celtic languages have their own layout. The UK or UK-Extended layout is also frequently used.

text: Italian[edit]

text:
Braces (right above square brackets and shown in purple) are given with both AltGr and Shift pressed.
The tilde (~) and backquote (`) characters are not present on the Italian keyboard layout (with Linux, they are available by pressing AltGr+⇧ Shift+ì, and AltGr+⇧ Shift+'; Windows might not recognise these keybindings).
When using Microsoft Windows, the standard Italian keyboard layout does not allow one to write 100% correct Italian language, since it lacks capital accented vowels, and in particular the È key. The common workaround is writing E' (E followed by an apostrophe) instead, or relying on the auto-correction feature of several word processors when available. It is possible to obtain the È symbol in MS Windows by typing Alt + 0200. Mac users, however, can write the correct accented character by pressing ⇧ Shift + ⌥ Option + E or, in the usual Mac way, by pressing the correct key for the accent (in this case Alt + 9) and subsequently pressing the wanted letter (in this case ⇧ Shift + E). Linux users can also write it by pressing the è key with ⇪ Caps Lock enabled.

text: There is an alternate layout, which differs only in disposition of characters accessible through AltGr, and includes the tilde and the curly brackets. It is commonly used in IBM keyboards.

text: Italian typewriters often[citation needed] have the QZERTY layout instead.

text: The Italian-speaking part of Switzerland uses the QWERTZ keyboard.

text: Latvian (QWERTY)[edit]

text: Although rarely used, a keyboard layout specifically designed for the Latvian language called ŪGJRMV exists. The Latvian QWERTY keyboard layout is most commonly used - its layout is the same as latin ones, but with a dead key, which allows entering special characters (āčēģīķļņšūž, sometimes ō and ŗ). The most common dead key is the apostrophe ('), which is followed by Alt+Gr (Windows default for Latvian layout). Some prefer using tick (`).

text: Maltese[edit]

text: The Maltese language uses Unicode (UTF-8) to display the Maltese diacritics: ċ Ċ; ġ Ġ; ħ Ħ; ż Ż (together with à À; è È; ì Ì; ò Ò; ù Ù). There are two standard keyboard layouts for Maltese, according to "MSA 100:2002 Maltese Keyboard Standard"; one of 47 keys and one of 48 keys. The 48-key layout is the most popular.

text: Norwegian[edit]

text: The Norwegian languages use the same letters as Danish, but the Norwegian keyboard differs from the Danish layout regarding the placement of the Ø, Æ and \ (backslash) keys. On the Danish keyboard, the Ø and Æ are swapped. The Swedish keyboard is also similar to the Norwegian layout, but Ø and Æ are replaced with Ö and Ä. On some systems, the Norwegian keyboard may allow typing Ö/ö and Ä/ä by holding the AltGr or ⌥ Option key while striking Ø and Æ, respectively.

text: There is also an alternative keyboard layout called Norwegian with Sámi, which allows for easier input of the characters required to write various Sámi (also known as Lapp) languages. All the Sámi characters are accessed through the AltGr key.

text: On Macintosh computers, the Norwegian and Norwegian extended keyboard layouts have a slightly different placement for some of the symbols obtained with the help of the ⇧ Shift or ⌥ Option keys. Notably, the $ sign is accessed with ⇧ Shift+4 and ¢ with ⇧ Shift+⌥ Option+4. Furthermore, the frequently used @ is placed between Æ and Return.

text: Polish[edit]

text: Most typewriters use a QWERTZ keyboard with Polish letters (with diacritical marks) accessed directly (officially approved as "Typist's keyboard", Polish: klawiatura maszynistki, Polish Standard PN-87), which is mainly ignored in Poland as impractical (except custom-made, e.g., in public sector and some Apple computers); the "Polish programmer's" (Polish: polski programisty) layout has become the de facto standard, used on virtually all computers sold on the Polish market.

text: Most computer keyboards in Poland are laid out according to the standard US visual and functional layout. Polish diacritics are accessed by using the AltGr key with a corresponding similar letter from the base Latin alphabet. Normal capitalization rules apply with respect to Shift and Caps Lock keys. For example, to enter "Ź", one can type Shift+AltGr+X with Caps Lock off, or turn on Caps Lock and type AltGr+X.

text: Both ANSI[25] and ISO[26] mechanical layouts are common sights, and even some non-standard[27] mechanical layouts are in use. ANSI is often preferred, as the additional key provides no additional function, at least in Microsoft Windows where it duplicates the backslash key, while taking space from the Shift key. Many keyboards do not label AltGr as such, leaving the Alt marking as in the US layout - the right Alt key nevertheless functions as AltGr in this layout, causing possible confusion when keyboard shortcuts with the Alt key are required (these usually work only with the left Alt) and causing the key to be commonly referred to as right Alt (Polish: prawy Alt).[28] However, keyboards with AltGr marking are available and it is also officially used by Microsoft when depicting the layout.[29]

text:
Key combinations to obtain Polish characters (Windows)

Caps Lock state
In combination with
Keystroke

A
C
E
L
N
O
S
Z
X
U

Off
right Alt
ą
ć
ę
ł
ń
ó
ś
ż
ź
€

Shift & right Alt
Ą
Ć
Ę
Ł
Ń
Ó
Ś
Ż
Ź

On
right Alt
Ą
Ć
Ę
Ł
Ń
Ó
Ś
Ż
Ź
€

Shift & right Alt
ą
ć
ę
ł
ń
ó
ś
ż
ź

Note: On Polish programmer keyboard, right Alt plays the role of AltGr

text: Also, on MS Windows, the tilde character "~" (Shift+`) acts as a dead key to type Polish letters (with diacritical marks) thus, to obtain an "Ł", one may press Shift+` followed by L. The tilde character is obtained with (Shift+`) then space.

text: In Linux-based systems, the euro symbol is typically mapped to Alt+5 instead of Alt+U, the tilde acts as a normal key, and several accented letters from other European languages are accessible through combinations with left Alt. Polish letters are also accessible by using the compose key.

text: Software keyboards on touchscreen devices usually make the Polish diacritics available as one of the alternatives which show up after long-pressing the corresponding Latin letter.[30][31] However, modern predictive text and autocorrection algorithms largely mitigate the need to type them directly on such devices.

text: Portuguese[edit]

text: Brazil[edit]

text: The Brazilian computer keyboard layout is specified in the ABNT NBR 10346 variant 2 (alphanumeric portion) and 10347 (numeric portion) standards.

text: Essentially, the Brazilian keyboard contains dead keys for five variants of diacritics in use in the language; the letter Ç, the only application of the cedilla in Portuguese, has its own key. In some keyboard layouts the AltGr+C combination produces the ₢ character (Unicode 0x20A2), symbol for the old currency cruzeiro, a symbol that is not used in practice (the common abbreviation in the eighties and nineties used to be Cr$). The cent sign ¢, is accessible via AltGr+5, but is not commonly used for the centavo, subunit of previous currencies as well as the current real, which itself is represented by R$. The Euro sign € is not standardized in this layout. The masculine and feminine ordinals ª and º are accessible via AltGr combinations. The section sign § (Unicode U+00A7), in Portuguese called parágrafo, is nowadays practically only used to denote sections of laws.

text: Variant 2 of the Brazilian keyboard, the only which gained general acceptance (MS Windows treats both variants as the same layout),[32] has a unique mechanical layout, combining some features of the ISO 9995-3 and the JIS keyboards in order to fit 12 keys between the left and right Shift (compared to the American standard of 10 and the international of 11). Its modern, IBM PS/2-based variations, are thus known as 107-keys keyboards, and the original PS/2 variation was 104-key. Variant 1, never widely adopted, was based on the ISO 9995-2 keyboards. To make this layout usable with keyboards with only 11 keys in the last row, the rightmost key (/?°) has its functions replicated across the AltGr+Q, AltGr+W, and AltGr+E combinations.

text: Portugal[edit]

text: Essentially, the Portuguese keyboard contains dead keys for five variants of diacritics; the letter Ç, the only application of the cedilla in Portuguese, has its own key, but there are also a dedicated key for the ordinal indicators and a dedicated key for quotation marks. The AltGr+E combination for producing the euro sign € (Unicode 0x20AC) has become standard. On some QWERTY keyboards the key labels are translated, but the majority are labelled in English.

text: During the 20th century, a different keyboard layout, HCESAR, was in widespread use in Portugal.

text: Romanian (in Romania and Moldova)[edit]

text: The current Romanian National Standard SR 13392:2004 establishes two layouts for Romanian keyboards: a "primary"[33] one and a "secondary"[34] one.

text: The "primary" layout is intended for traditional users who have learned how to type with older, Microsoft-style implementations of the Romanian keyboard. The "secondary" layout is mainly used by programmers as it does not contradict the physical arrangement of keys on a US-style keyboard. The "secondary" arrangement is used as the default Romanian layout by Linux distributions, as defined in the "X Keyboard Configuration Database"[35]

text: There are four Romanian-specific characters that are incorrectly implemented in versions of Microsoft Windows prior to Vista:

text:
Ș (U+0218, S with comma), incorrectly implemented as Ş (U+015E, S with cedilla)
ș (U+0219, s with comma), incorrectly implemented as ş (U+015F, s with cedilla)
Ț (U+021A, T with comma), incorrectly implemented as Ţ (U+0162, T with cedilla)
ț (U+021B, t with comma), incorrectly implemented as ţ (U+0163, t with cedilla)

text: The cedilla-versions of the characters do not exist in the Romanian language (they came to be used due to a historic bug).[36] The UCS now says that encoding this was a mistake because it messed up Romanian data and the letters with cedilla and the letters with comma are the same letter with a different style.[37]

text: Since Romanian hardware keyboards are not widely available, Cristian Secară has created a driver that allows Romanian characters to be generated with a US-style keyboard in all versions of Windows prior to Vista through the use of the AltGr key modifier.[38]

text: MS Windows 7 now includes the correct diacritical signs in the default Romanian Keyboard layout. This layout has the Z and Y keys mapped like in English layouts and also includes characters like the 'at' (@) and dollar ($) signs, among others. The older cedilla-version layout is still included albeit as the 'Legacy' layout.

text: Slovak (QWERTY)[edit]

text: In Slovakia, similarly to the Czech Republic, both QWERTZ and QWERTY keyboard layouts are used. QWERTZ is the default keyboard layout for Slovak in Microsoft Windows.

text: Spanish[edit]

text: Spain, also known as Spanish (International sort)[edit]

text: The Spanish keyboard layout is used to write in Spanish and in other languages of Spain such as Aragonese, Asturian, Catalan, Occitan, Galician and Basque. It includes Ñ for Spanish, Asturian and Galician, the acute accent, the diaeresis, the left question and exclamation marks (¿, ¡) and, finally, some characters required only for typing Catalan and Occitan that are Ç, the grave accent and the interpunct (punt volat / punt interior, used in l·l, n·h, s·h; located at Shift-3). It can also be used to write other international characters, such as the circumflex accent (used in French and Portuguese among others) and the tilde (used in both Spanish and Portuguese), which are available as dead keys. However, it lacks two characters used in Asturian: Ḥ and Ḷ (historically, general support for these two has been poor – they aren't present in the ISO 8859-1 character encoding standard, or any other ISO/IEC 8859 standard); several alternative distributions, based on this one or created from scratch, have been created to address this issue (see the Other original layouts and layout design software section for more information).

text: On most keyboards, € is marked as Alt Gr + E and not Alt Gr + 5 as shown in the image. However, in some keyboards, € is found marked twice. An alternative version exists, supporting all of ISO 8859-1.[39]

text: Spanish keyboards are usually labelled in Spanish instead of English, its abbreviations being:

text:
Spanish label
English equivalent

Insertar (Ins)
Insert (Ins)

Suprimir (Supr)
Delete (Del)

Retroceder página (Re Pág)
Page up (PgUp)

Avanzar página (Av Pág)
Page down (PgDn)

Inicio
Home

Fin
End

Imprimir pantalla / Petición de sistema (Impr Pant/PetSis)
Print Screen / System request (PrtScn/SysRq)

Bloqueo de mayúsculas (Bloq Mayús)
Caps Lock

Bloqueo numérico (Bloq Num)
Num Lock

Bloqueo de desplazamiento (Bloq Despl)
Scroll Lock

Pausa / Interrumpir (Pausa/Inter)
Pause/Break

Intro
Enter

text: The c-cedilla key (Ç), instead of on the right of the acute accent key (´), is located alternatively on some keyboards one or two lines above. In some cases it's placed on the right of the plus sign key (+).[40][41] In other keyboards it's situated on the right of the inverted exclamation mark key (¡).[42][43]

text: Hispanic America[edit]

text: The Hispanic American Spanish keyboard layout is used throughout Mexico, Central and South America. Before its design, Hispanic American vendors had been selling the Spanish (Spain) layout as default.

text: Its most obvious difference from the Spanish (Spain) layout is the lack of a Ç key; on Microsoft Windows it lacks a tilde (~) dead key, whereas on Linux systems the dead tilde can be optionally enabled. This is not a problem when typing in Spanish, but it is rather problematic when typing in Portuguese, which can be an issue in countries with large commercial ties to Brazil (Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay).

text: Normally "Bloq Mayús" is used instead of "Caps Lock", and "Intro" instead of "Enter".

text: Swedish[edit]

text: The central characteristics of the Swedish keyboard are the three additional letters Å/å, Ä/ä, and Ö/ö. The same visual layout is also in use in Finland, as the letters Ä/ä and Ö/ö are shared with the Swedish language, and even Å/å is needed by Swedish-speaking Finns. However, the Finnish multilingual keyboard adds new letters and punctuation to the functional layout.

text: The Norwegian keyboard largely resembles the Swedish layout, but the Ö and Ä are replaced with Ø and Æ. The Danish keyboard is also similar, but it has the Ø and Æ swapped. On some systems, the Swedish or Finnish keyboard may allow typing Ø/ø and Æ/æ by holding the AltGr or ⌥ Option key while striking Ö and Ä, respectively.

text: The Swedish with Sámi keyboard allows typing not only Ø/ø and Æ/æ, but even the letters required to write various Sámi (also known as Lapp) languages. This keyboard has the same function for all the keys engraved on the regular Swedish keyboard, and the additional letters are available through the AltGr key.

text: On Macintosh computers, the Swedish and Swedish Pro keyboards differ somewhat from the image shown above, especially as regards the characters available using the ⇧ Shift or ⌥ Option keys. ⇧ Shift+§ (on the upper row) produces the ° sign, and ⇧ Shift+4 produces the € sign. The digit keys produce ©@£$∞§|[]≈ with ⌥ Option and ¡"¥¢‰¶\{}≠ with ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift.

text: On Linux systems, the Swedish keyboard may also give access to additional characters as follows:

text:
first row: AltGr ¶¡@£$€¥{[]}\± and AltGr+⇧ Shift ¾¹²³¼¢⅝÷«»°¿¬
second row: AltGr @ł€®þ←↓→œþ"~ and AltGr+⇧ Shift ΩŁ¢®Þ¥↑ıŒÞ°ˇ
third row: AltGr ªßðđŋħjĸłøæ´ and AltGr+⇧ Shift º§ÐªŊĦJ&ŁØÆ×
fourth row: AltGr |«»©""nµ¸·̣ and AltGr+⇧ Shift ¦<>©‘’Nº˛˙˙

text: Several of these characters function as dead keys.

text: Turkish (Q-keyboard)[edit]

text: Today the majority of Turkish keyboards are based on QWERTY (the so-called Q-keyboard layout), although there is also the older F-keyboard layout specifically designed for the language.

text: United Kingdom[edit]

text: The United Kingdom and Ireland[nb 1] use a keyboard layout based on the 48-key version defined in (the now withdrawn) British Standard BS 4822.[44] It is very similar to that of the United States, but has an extra key and a larger Enter key, includes £ and € signs and some rarely used EBCDIC symbols (¬, ¦), and uses different positions for the characters @, ", #, ~, \, and |. See the article British and American keyboards for details.

text: The BS 4822:1994 standard did not make any use of the AltGr key and lacked support for any non-ASCII characters other than ¬ and £. It also assigned a key for the non-ASCII character broken bar (¦), but lacks one for the far more commonly used ASCII character vertical bar (|). It also lacked support for various diacritics used in the Welsh alphabet, and the Scottish Gaelic alphabet; and also is missing the letter yogh, ȝ, used very rarely in the Scots language. Therefore, various manufacturers have modified or extended the BS 4822 standard:

text:
The B00 key (left of Z), shifted, results in vertical bar (|) on some systems (e.g. Windows UK/Ireland keyboard layout and Linux/X11 UK/Ireland keyboard layout), rather than the broken bar (¦) assigned by BS 4822 and provided in some systems (e.g. IBM OS/2 UK166 keyboard layout)
The E00 key (left of 1) with AltGr provides either vertical bar (|) (OS/2's UK166 keyboard layout, Linux/X11 UK keyboard layout) or broken bar (¦) (Microsoft Windows UK/Ireland keyboard layout)

text: In many Commonwealth countries and other English-speaking jurisdictions (e.g., Canada, Australia, the Caribbean nations, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, New Zealand, and South Africa), local spelling conforms more closely to British English usage, while the supplied keyboard is or based on the English (US) keyboard. In Windows 8 and later versions, the backslash (\) key (left of Z or space) is duplicated onto the hash (#) key (left of Enter), press which with Alt Gr key to type backslash (\), with Alt Gr and Shift keys to type vertical bar (|). This aids users who are familiar with UK keyboard layout while the keyboard lacks this key (e.g. US Standard keyboard and Japan JIS keyboard).

text: UK Apple keyboard[edit]

text: The British version of the Apple Keyboard does not use the standard UK layout. Instead, some older versions have the US layout (see below) with a few differences: the £ sign is reached by ⇧ Shift+3 and the # sign by ⌥ Option+3, the opposite to the US layout. The € is also present and is typed with ⌥ Option+2. Umlauts are reached by typing ⌥ Option+U and then the vowel, and ß is reached by typing ⌥ Option+S.

text: Newer Apple "British" keyboards use a layout that is relatively unlike either the US or traditional UK keyboard. It uses an elongated return key, a shortened left ⇧ Shift with ` and ~ in the newly created position, and in the upper left of the keyboard are § and ± instead of the traditional EBCDIC codes. The middle-row key that fits inside the return key has \ and Pipe symbol.

text: United Kingdom (Extended) Layout[edit]

text: From Windows XP SP2 onwards, Microsoft has included a variant of the British QWERTY keyboard (the "United Kingdom Extended" keyboard layout) that can additionally generate several diacritical marks. This supports input on a standard physical UK keyboard for many languages without changing positions of frequently used keys, which is useful when working with text in Welsh and Scottish Gaelic — languages native to parts of the UK (Wales and parts of Scotland respectively).

text: Although the rarely used grave accent key becomes, as it also does in the US International layout, a dead key modifying the character generated by the next key pressed, the apostrophe, double-quote, tilde and caret keys are not changed. Instead, the additional characters are obtained using the AltGr key. The extended keyboard is software installed from the Windows control panel, and the extended characters are not normally engraved on keyboards.

text: Apple's Mac OS X does not include UK Extended, as it has key combinations for accents on any keyboard layout.

text: The UK International keyboard uses mostly the AltGr key to add diacritics to the letters a, e, i, n, o, u, w and y (the last two being used in Welsh) as appropriate for each character, as well as to their capitals. Pressing the key and then a character that does not take the specific diacritic produces the behaviour of a standard keyboard. The key presses followed by spacebar generate a stand-alone mark.:

text:
grave accents (e.g. à, è, etc.) are generated by pressing the grave accent/backtick key `, which is now a dead key, then the letter.
acute accents (e.g. á) are generated by pressing the AltGr key together with the letter, or AltGr+' (acting as a dead key combination) followed by the letter. Some programs use the combination of AltGr and a letter for other functions, in which case the AltGr+' method must be used to generate acute accents.
a circumflex (e.g. â, ê, etc.) is added by AltGr+6, acting as a dead key combination, followed by the letter.
diaeresis or umlaut (e.g. ä, ë, ö, etc.) is generated by a dead key combination AltGr+2, then the letter.
tilde (e.g. ã, ñ, õ, etc., as used in Spanish and Portuguese) is generated by dead key combination AltGr+#, then the letter.
cedilla (e.g. ç) under c is generated by AltGr+C, and the capital letter (Ç) is produced by AltGr+⇧ Shift+C

text: The AltGr and letter method used for acutes and cedillas does not work for applications which assign shortcut menu functions to these key combinations. For acute accents the AltGr and apostrophe method should be used.

text: These combinations are intended to be mnemonic and designed to be easy to remember: the circumflex accent (e.g. â) is similar to a caret (^), printed above the 6 key; the diaeresis/umlaut (e.g. ö) is visually similar to the double-quote (") above 2 on the UK keyboard; the tilde (~) is printed on the same key as the #.

text: The UK extended layout is almost entirely transparent to users familiar with the UK layout. A machine with the extended layout behaves exactly as with the standard UK, except for the rarely used grave accent key. This makes this layout suitable for a machine for shared or public use by a user population in which some use the extended functions.

text: Despite being created for multilingual users, UK-Extended does have some gaps — there are many languages that it cannot cope with, including Romanian and Turkish, and all languages with different character sets, such as Greek and Russian. It also does not cater for the ß in German, nor for the å, æ, ø, ð, þ in Nordic languages.

text: United States[edit]

text: The arrangement of the character input keys and the Shift keys contained in this layout is specified in the U.S. American national standard ANSI-INCITS 154-1988 (R1999) (formerly ANSI X3.154-1988 (R1999)),[45] where this layout is called "ASCII keyboard". The complete US keyboard layout, as it is usually found, also contains the usual function keys in accordance with the international standard ISO/IEC 9995-2, although this is not explicitly required by the US American national standard.

text: US keyboards are used not only in the United States, but also in many other English-speaking places, including India, Australia, English Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines. However, the United Kingdom and Ireland use a slightly different layout.

text: The US keyboard layout has a second Alt key instead of the AltGr key and does not use any dead keys; this makes it inefficient for all but a handful of languages. On the other hand, the US keyboard layout (or the similar UK layout) is occasionally used by programmers in countries where the keys for []{} are located in less convenient positions on the locally customary layout.[46]

text: On some keyboards the enter key is bigger than traditionally and takes up also a part of the line above, more or less the area of the traditional location of the backslash key (\). In these cases the backslash is located in alternative places.[47] It can be situated one line above the default location, on the right of the equals sign key (=).[48][49] Sometimes it's placed one line below its traditional situation, on the right of the apostrophe key (') (in these cases the enter key is narrower than usual on the line of its default location).[50] It may also be two lines below its default situation on the right of a narrower than traditionally right shift key.[51]

text: A variant of this layout is used in Arabic-speaking countries.

text: This variant has the | \ key to the left of Z, ~ ` key where the | \ key is in the usual layout, and the > < key where the ~ ` key is in the usual layout.[39]

text: US-International[edit]

text: An alternative layout uses the physical US keyboard to type diacritics in some operating systems (including Windows). This is the US-International layout, which uses the right Alt key as an AltGr key to support many additional characters directly as an additional shift key. (Since many smaller keyboards don't have a right Alt key, Windows also allows Ctrl+Alt to be used as a substitute for AltGr.) This layout also uses keys ', `, ", ^ and ~ as dead keys to generate characters with diacritics by pressing the appropriate key, then the letter on the keyboard. The international keyboard is a software setting installed from the Windows control panel[52] or similar; the additional functions (shown in blue) may or may not be engraved on the keyboard, but are always functional. It can be used to type most major languages from Western Europe: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, and Swedish. Some less common western European languages, such as Maltese and Welsh, are not fully supported by the US-International keyboard layout.

text: A diacritic key is activated by pressing and releasing it, then pressing the letter that requires a diacritic. After the two strokes, the single character with diacritics is generated. Note that only certain letters, such as vowels and "n", can have diacritics in this way. To generate the symbols ', `, ", ^ and ~, when the following character is capable of having a diacritic, press the Spacebar after the key.

text: Characters with diacritics can be typed with the following combinations:

text:
' + vowel → vowel with acute accent, e.g., '+e → é
` + vowel → vowel with grave accent, e.g., `+e → è
" + vowel → vowel with diaeresis (or umlaut), e.g., "+e → ë
^ + vowel → vowel with circumflex accent, e.g., ^+e → ê
~ + a, n or o → letter with tilde, e.g. ~+n → ñ, ~+o → õ
' + c → ç (Windows) or ć (X11)

text: The US-International layout is not entirely transparent to users familiar with the US layout; when using a machine with the international layout the commonly used single- and double-quote keys and the less commonly used grave accent, tilde, and caret keys behave unexpectedly. This could be disconcerting on a machine for shared or public use.

text: There are also alternative US-International formats, whereby modifier keys such as shift and alt are used, and the keys for the characters with diacritics are in different places from their unmodified counterparts, for example, using the AltGr modifier key to activate dead keys, so that the ASCII quotation marks or circumflex symbol are not affected and can be typed normally with a single keystroke.

text: US-International in the Netherlands[edit]

text: The standard keyboard layout in the Netherlands is US-International, as it provides easy access to diacritics on common UK- or US-like keyboards. The Dutch layout is historical, and keyboards with this layout are rarely used. Many US keyboards sold do not have the extra US-International characters or AltGr engraved on the keys, although € (AltGr+5) always is; nevertheless, the keys work as expected even if not marked. Many computer-literate Dutch people have retained the old habit of using Alt + number codes to type accented characters; others routinely type without diacritics, then use a spelling checker to produce the correct forms.[citation needed]

text: Apple International English Keyboard[edit]

text: There are three kinds of Apple Keyboards for English: the United States, the United Kingdom and International English. The International English version is almost identical to the United States version, but some features are identical to the United Kingdom version:

text:
The ~
` key is located on the left of the Z key, and the
\ key is located on the right of the "
' key.
The ±
§ key is added on the left of the !
1 key.
The left ⇧ Shift key is shortened and the Return key has the shape of inverted L.

text: Vietnamese[edit]

text: The Vietnamese keyboard layout is an extended Latin QWERTY layout. The letters Ă, Â, Ê, and Ô are found on what would be the number keys 1–4 on the US English keyboard, with 5–9 producing the tonal marks (grave accent, hook, tilde, acute accent and dot below, in that order), 0 producing Đ, = producing the đồng sign (₫) when not shifted, and brackets ([]) producing Ư and Ơ.[53]

text: EurKEY[edit]

text: EurKEY[54] is a free and open source US-based layout which provides easy access to many diacritics of European languages as well as to common math symbols and Greek letters. It is available for Windows, OS X, Linux (shipped with xkeyboard-config).

text: Alternatives[edit]

text: Several alternatives to QWERTY have been developed over the years, claimed by their designers and users to be more efficient, intuitive, and ergonomic. Nevertheless, none have seen widespread adoption, partly due to the sheer dominance of available keyboards and training.[55] Although some studies have suggested that some of these may allow for faster typing speeds,[56] many other studies have failed to do so, and many of the studies claiming improved typing speeds were severely methodologically flawed or deliberately biased, such as the studies administered by Dvorak himself before and after World War II.[citation needed] Economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis have noted that rigorous studies are inconclusive as to whether they actually offer any real benefits,[57] and some studies on keyboard layout have suggested that, for a skilled typist, layout is largely irrelevant – even randomized and alphabetical keyboards allow for similar typing speeds to QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards, and that switching costs always outweigh the benefits of further training on whichever keyboard you already use.

text: The most widely used such alternative is the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard; another alternative is Colemak, which is based partly on QWERTY and is claimed to be easier for an existing QWERTY typist to learn while offering several supposed optimisations.[58] Most modern computer operating systems support these and other alternative mappings with appropriate special mode settings, with some modern operating systems allowing the user to map their keyboard in any way they like, but few keyboards are manufactured with keys labeled according to any other standard.

text: Comparison to other keyboard input systems[edit]

text: This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: Some people have compared Dvorak and QWERTY to other keyboard input systems, namely stenotype and its implementations (e.g., opensource PLOVER [1]). These systems provide some advantage (including a 700% increase in efficiency over QWERTY[59]) but they are fundamentally different from ordinary typing. Words are input by pressing on several keys and releasing simultaneously but don't require the keys to be pressed down in any order. Neither is the spacebar used. There is a learning hurdle in that hunt and peck does not work. However, it is easy to write at 180–300 wpm.[citation needed] It is worth noting that PLOVER stenotype theory[clarification needed] required a stenotype machine prior to 2010; due to the inherent difficulties of chording QWERTY was invented to allow machines to be made that didn't jam up; stenotype was invented for maximum speed and accuracy.[citation needed]

text: The first typed shorthand machines appeared around 1880, roughly current with QWERTY, but the first stenotype machines appeared in 1913.[citation needed] Also, these machines' output needed to be interpreted by a trained professional, comparable to reading Gregg shorthand, which was very much in vogue at the time and taught publicly until the 1980s.[citation needed] Gregg shorthand also didn't require much more than training and a pen, however machines gradually gained traction in the courtroom. Modern PLOVER immediately provides translated output, making it very much like other keyboard setups that immediately produce legible work.

text: Half QWERTY[edit]

text: A half QWERTY keyboard is a combination of an alpha-numeric keypad and a QWERTY keypad, designed for mobile phones.[60] In a half QWERTY keyboard, two characters share the same key, which reduces the number of keys and increases the surface area of each key, useful for mobile phones that have little space for keys.[60] It means that 'Q' and 'W' share the same key and the user must press the key once to type 'Q' and twice to type 'W'.


document_title: Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)

question_text: how did kurtz die in the heart of darkness

root

text: Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)

text: In the novella[edit]

text: Kurtz is an ivory trader, sent by a shadowy Belgian company into the heart of an unnamed place in Africa (generally regarded as the Congo Free State). With the help of his superior technology, Kurtz has turned himself into a charismatic demigod of all the tribes surrounding his station, and gathered vast quantities of ivory in this way. As a result, his name is known throughout the region. Kurtz's general manager is envious of Kurtz, and plots his downfall.

tag: p

text:
Kurtz's mother was half English, his father was half French and thus "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.” As the reader finds out at the end, Kurtz is a multitalented man—painter, musician, writer, promising politician. He starts out, years before the novel begins, as an imperialist in the best tradition of the "white man's burden". The reader is introduced to a painting of Kurtz's, depicting a blindfolded woman bearing a torch against a nearly black background, and clearly symbolic of his former views. Kurtz is also the author of a pamphlet regarding the civilization of the natives.
The presence of his admirer, the Russian "Harlequin", and what he reveals about Kurtz in his adulatory descriptions of him raises questions about Kurtz's actual beliefs and the sincerity of his progressive views.[1]

text: However, over the course of his stay in Africa, Kurtz becomes corrupted. He takes his pamphlet and scribbles in, at the very end, the words "Exterminate all the brutes!" He induces the natives to worship him, setting up rituals and venerations worthy of a tyrant. By the time Marlow, the protagonist, sees Kurtz, he is ill with jungle fever and almost dead. Marlow seizes Kurtz and endeavors to take him back down the river in his steamboat. Kurtz dies on the boat with the last words, "The horror! The horror!" Kurtz ultimately was changed by the jungle. At first he wanted to bring civilization to the natives, as his painting shows, but in the end he changed to wanting to "exterminate all the brutes!"

text: Basis[edit]

text: Kurtz's persona is generally understood to derive from the notoriously brutal history of the so-called "Congo Free State", which was later taken over by Belgium and became a Belgian colony in 1908. In his history book King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild suggests that Léon Rom, an administrator in King Leopold's Congo, i.e. in the Congo Free State, was the principal inspiration for the Kurtz character, citing references as the heads on the stakes outside of the station and other similarities between the two. Hochschild and other authors have also suggested that the fate of the disastrous "rear column" of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1886-8) on the Congo may have also been an influence. Column leader Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, "went mad, began hitting, whipping, and killing people, and was finally murdered". Bloom notes that Kurtz's sophisticated brutality is closer to that of Barttelot's associate slave trader Tippu Tip. The expedition's overall leader, Henry Morton Stanley, the principal figure involved in preparing the Congo for Leopold's rule, may also have been an influence.[2][3]

text: A personal acquaintance of Conrad's, Georges Antoine Klein, may also have been a real-life basis for the character.[4] Klein was an employee of the Brussels-based trading company Société Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo, and died shortly after being picked up on the steamboat Conrad was piloting. Further, "Klein" means "little" in German, and as Marlow muses in the novella, "Kurtz" means "short" in the same language.

text: Conrad also expressed an admiration of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific Ocean writings, in particular the stories "The Beach of Falesá" and The Ebb-Tide, as well as the non-fiction account of Tembinok' of the Gilbert Islands that appeared in In the South Seas. All three texts contain megalomaniacs who manipulate their circumstances and remote settings to assert power over others. It is widely believed that Conrad drew influence from these characters, as well as Stevenson's plot lines, when writing Heart of Darkness.

text: In other works[edit]

text: Film[edit]

text: In the 1958 loose adaptation for the CBS television anthology series Playhouse 90 Kurtz was played by Boris Karloff. This version uses the encounter between Marlow and Kurtz as its final act, and adds a backstory in which Marlow had been Kurtz's adopted son.

text: Francis Ford Coppola's acclaimed[5][6] Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now (1979) centers on the protagonist's mission to find and kill the renegade Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando), based on Conrad's character, who has gone rogue far up a river, deep in the Southeast Asian jungle. The script acknowledges Heart of Darkness as a source of information, and the last words of Colonel Kurtz, "The horror! The horror!", echo those of his namesake in the novel.

text: In the mostly poorly received[7][8] 1994 TNT version of the story directed by Nicolas Roeg, Kurtz, who has gone insane and is now doing the most horrible and blasphemous deeds, was portrayed by John Malkovich.

text: Games[edit]

text: The video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010) features a character in many ways similar to Kurtz; a man who refers to himself as Caesar. Caesar was originally a diplomat who went out into the post-apocalyptic world in an attempt to both increase the knowledge of the now tribal inhabitants and learn from their cultures to facilitate understanding in the wasteland. Caesar eventually went mad with power after becoming the de facto leader of one such tribe and led them in dismantling other tribes who then assimilated into his group. Now, he is the ruler of Caesar's Legion, a large army of tribals modeled after the Roman Empire. Like Kurtz, Caesar is an educated, charismatic figure who is worshipped as a god by his underlings; in Caesar's case, his followers believe him to be the reincarnation of Mars, the Roman god of war.

text: The video game Spec Ops: The Line (2012), another modernized loose adaptation of Heart of Darkness (set in a ruined Dubai), has a similar Kurtz figure named Colonel John Konrad.

text: Literature[edit]

text: Timothy Findley's novel Headhunter (1993) features Kurtz's escape from Heart of Darkness and subsequent reign of terror over the city of Toronto as the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Parkin Institute.

text: The poem "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot starts off with the line "Mistah Kurtz - He Dead."

text: In Josef Škvorecký's novel The Engineer of Human Souls Kurtz is seen as the epitome of exterminatory colonialism.

text: James Reich's novel Mistah Kurtz! (Anti-Oedipus Press 2016) is a prelude to Heart of Darkness that presents meticulous and controversial solutions to the origins, mystery and messianic deterioration of Kurtz.


document_title: Conflict of interest

question_text: what does conflict of interest mean in law

question_tokens: what does conflict of interest mean in law

text: Conflict of interest

text: Related to the practice of law[edit]

text:
Professional responsibility

Duties to the client

Confidentiality

Avoiding conflict of interest

Due diligence and Competence (law)

Avoid commingling

Avoid self-dealing

Effective assistance

Avoid fee splitting

Withdrawal from representation

Duties to the court

Disclosure of perjury

Disclosure of adverse authority

Duties to the profession

Limitations on legal advertising

Report misconduct

Sources of law

ABA Model Rules

Penalties for misconduct

Disbarment
Judicial misconduct

v
t
e

tag: table

text: Judicial disqualification, also referred to as recusal, refers to the act of abstaining from participation in an official action such as a court case/legal proceeding due to a conflict of interest of the presiding court official or administrative officer. Applicable statutes or canons of ethics may provide standards for recusal in a given proceeding or matter. Providing that the judge or presiding officer must be free from disabling conflicts of interest makes the fairness of the proceedings less likely to be questioned.[2]

text: In the legal profession, the duty of loyalty owed to a client prohibits an attorney (or a law firm) from representing any other party with interests adverse to those of a current client. The few exceptions to this rule require informed written consent from all affected clients, i.e., an "ethical wall". In some circumstances, a conflict of interest can never be waived by a client. In perhaps the most common example encountered by the general public, the same firm should not represent both parties in a divorce or child custody matter. Found conflict can lead to denial or disgorgement of legal fees, or in some cases (such as the failure to make mandatory disclosure), criminal proceedings. In the United States, a law firm usually cannot represent a client if its interests conflict with those of another client, even if they have separate lawyers within the firm, unless (in some jurisdictions) the lawyer is segregated from the rest of the firm for the duration of the conflict. Law firms often employ software in conjunction with their case management and accounting systems in order to meet their duties to monitor their conflict of interest exposure and to assist in obtaining waivers.[3]

text: Generally (unrelated to the practice of law)[edit]

text: More generally, conflicts of interest can be defined as any situation in which an individual or corporation (either private or governmental) is in a position to exploit a professional or official capacity in some way for their personal or corporate benefit.[4]

text: Depending upon the law or rules related to a particular organization, the existence of a conflict of interest may not, in and of itself, be evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, for many professionals, it is virtually impossible to avoid having conflicts of interest from time to time. A conflict of interest can, however, become a legal matter, for example, when an individual tries (and/or succeeds in) influencing the outcome of a decision, for personal benefit. A director or executive of a corporation will be subject to legal liability if a conflict of interest breaches his/her duty of loyalty.[4]

text: There often is confusion over these two situations. Someone accused of a conflict of interest may deny that a conflict exists because he/she did not act improperly. In fact, a conflict of interest can exist even if there are no improper acts as a result of it. (One way to understand this is to use the term "conflict of roles". A person with two roles—an individual who owns stock and is also a government official, for example—may experience situations where those two roles conflict. The conflict can be mitigated—see below—but it still exists. In and of itself, having two roles is not illegal, but the differing roles will certainly provide an incentive for improper acts in some circumstances.)[4]

text: As an example, in the sphere of business and control, according to the Institute of Internal Auditors:

text: conflict of interest is a situation in which an internal auditor, who is in a position of trust, has a competing professional or personal interest. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results. A conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the internal auditor, the internal audit activity, and the profession. A conflict of interest could impair an individual's ability to perform his or her duties and responsibilities objectively.[5][6]

text: Organizational[edit]

text: This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: An organizational conflict of interest (OCI) may exist in the same way as described above, for instance where a corporation provides two types of service to the government and these services conflict (e.g.: manufacturing parts and then participating on a selection committee comparing parts manufacturers). Corporations may develop simple or complex systems to mitigate the risk or perceived risk of a conflict of interest. These risks can be evaluated by a government agency (for example, in a U.S. Government RFP) to determine whether the risks create a substantial advantage to the organization in question over its competition, or will decrease the overall competitiveness of the bidding process.

text: Conflict of interest in the health care industry[edit]

text: The influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medical research has been a major cause for concern. In 2009 a study found that "a number of academic institutions" do not have clear guidelines for relationships between Institutional Review Boards and industry.[7]

text: In contrast to this viewpoint, an article and associated editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine in May 2015 [8] emphasized the importance of pharmaceutical industry-physician interactions for the development of novel treatments, and argued that moral outrage over industry malfeasance had unjustifiably led many to overemphasize the problems created by financial conflicts of interest. The article noted that major healthcare organizations such as National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Food and Drug Administration had encouraged greater interactions between physicians and industry in order to bring greater benefits to patients.[9]

text: Types[edit]

text: The following are the most common forms of conflicts of interests:[10]

text:
Self-dealing, in which an official who controls an organization causes it to enter into a transaction with the official, or with another organization that benefits the official only. The official is on both sides of the "deal."
Outside employment, in which the interests of one job conflict with another.
Nepotism, in which a spouse, child, or other close relative is employed (or applies for employment) by an individual, or where goods or services are purchased from a relative or from a firm controlled by a relative. To avoid nepotism in hiring, many employment applications ask if the applicant is related to a current employee of the company. This allows recusal if the employed relative has a role in the hiring process. If this is the case, the relative could then recuse from any hiring decisions.
Gifts from friends who also do business with the person receiving the gifts or from individuals or corporations who do business with the organization in which the gift recipient is employed. Such gifts may include non-tangible things of value such as transportation and lodging.
Pump and dump, in which a stock broker who owns a security artificially inflates the price by "upgrading" it or spreading rumors, sells the security and adds short position, then "downgrades" the security or spreads negative rumors to push the price down.

tag: ul

text: Other improper acts that are sometimes classified as conflicts of interests may have better classification. For example, accepting bribes can be classified as corruption, use of government or corporate property or assets for personal use is fraud, and unauthorized distribution of confidential information is a security breach. For these improper acts, there is no inherent conflict.

text: COI is sometimes termed competition of interest rather than "conflict", emphasizing a connotation of natural competition between valid interests - rather than the classical definition of conflict, which would include by definition including a victim and unfair aggression. Nevertheless, this denotation of conflict of interest is not generally seen.

text: Examples[edit]

text:
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The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate. (April 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

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text: Environmental hazards and human health[edit]

text: Baker[11] summarized 176 studies of the potential impact of Bisphenol A on human health as follows:[12]

text:
Funding
Harm
No Harm

Industry
0
13 (100%)

Independent (e.g., government)
152 (86%)
11 (14%)

text: Lessig[13] noted that this does not mean that the funding source influenced the results. However, it does raise questions about the validity of the industry-funded studies specifically, because the researchers conducting those studies have a conflict of interest; they are subject at minimum to a natural human inclination to please the people who paid for their work. Lessig provided a similar summary of 326 studies of the potential harm from cell phone usage with results that were similar but not as stark.[14]

text: Self-regulation[edit]

text: Self-regulation of any group is also a conflict of interest. If any organization, such as a corporation or government bureaucracy, is asked to eliminate unethical behavior within their own group, it may be in their interest in the short run to eliminate the appearance of unethical behavior, rather than the behavior itself, by keeping any ethical breaches hidden, instead of exposing and correcting them. An exception occurs when the ethical breach is already known by the public. In that case, it could be in the group's interest to end the ethical problem to which the public has knowledge, but keep remaining breaches hidden.[citation needed]

text: Insurance claims adjusters[edit]

text: Insurance companies retain claims adjusters to represent their interest in adjusting claims. It is in the best interest of the insurance companies that the very smallest settlement is reached with its claimants. Based on the adjuster's experience and knowledge of the insurance policy it is very easy for the adjuster to convince an unknowing claimant to settle for less than what they may otherwise be entitled which could be a larger settlement. There is always a very good chance of a conflict of interest to exist when one adjuster tries to represent both sides of a financial transaction such as an insurance claim. This problem is exacerbated when the claimant is told, or believes, the insurance company's claims adjuster is fair and impartial enough to satisfy both theirs and the insurance company's interests. These types of conflicts could easily be avoided by the use of disclosures.[citation needed]

text: Purchasing agents and sales personnel[edit]

text: A person working as the equipment purchaser for a company may get a bonus proportionate to the amount he's under budget by year end. However, this becomes an incentive for him to purchase inexpensive, substandard equipment. Therefore, this is counter to the interests of those in his company who must actually use the equipment. W. Edwards Deming listed "purchasing on price alone" as number 4 of his famous 14 points, and he often said things to the effect that "He who purchases on price alone deserves to get rooked."[citation needed]

text: Government officials[edit]

text: Regulating conflict of interest in government is one of the aims of political ethics. Public officials are expected to put service to the public and their constituents ahead of their personal interests. Conflict of interest rules are intended to prevent officials from making decisions in circumstances that could reasonably be perceived as violating this duty of office. Rules in the executive branch tend to be stricter and easier to enforce than in the legislative branch.[15] Two problems make legislative ethics of conflicts difficult and distinctive.[16] First, as James Madison wrote, legislators should share a "communion of interests" with their constituents. Legislators cannot adequately represent the interests of constituents without also representing some of their own. As Senator Robert S. Kerr once said, "I represent the farmers of Oklahoma, although I have large farm interests. I represent the oil business in Oklahoma...and I am in the oil business...They don't want to send a man here who has no community of interest with them, because he wouldn't be worth a nickel to them."[17] The problem is to distinguish special interests from the general interests of all constituents. Second, the "political interests" of legislatures include campaign contributions which they need to get elected, and which are generally not illegal and not the same as a bribe. But under many circumstances they can have the same effect. The problem here is how to keep the secondary interest in raising campaign funds from overwhelming what should be their primary interest—fulfilling the duties of office.[citation needed]

text: Politics in the United States is dominated in many ways by political campaign contributions.[2] Candidates are often not considered "credible" unless they have a campaign budget far beyond what could reasonably be raised from citizens of ordinary means. The impact of this money can be found in many places, most notably in studies of how campaign contributions affect legislative behavior. For example, the price of sugar in the United States has been roughly double the international price for over half a century. In the 1980s, this added $3 billion to the annual budget of U.S. consumers, according to Stern,[18] who provided the following summary of one part of how this happens:

text:
Contributions from the sugar lobby, 1983–1986
Percent voting in 1985 against gradually reducing sugar subsidies

> $5,000
100%

$2,500–5,000
97%

$1,000–2,500
68%

$1–1,000
45%

$0
20%

text: This $3 billion translates into $41 per household per year. This is in essence a tax collected by a nongovernmental agency: It is a cost imposed on consumers by governmental decisions, but never considered in any of the standard data on tax collections.

text: Stern notes that sugar interests contributed $2.6 million to political campaigns, representing well over $1,000 return for each $1 contributed to political campaigns. This, however, does not include the cost of lobbying. Lessig cites six different studies that consider the cost of lobbying with campaign contributions on a variety of issues considered in Washington, D.C.[19] These studies produced estimates of the anticipated return on each $1 invested in lobbying and political campaigns that ranged from $6 to $220. Lessig notes that clients who pay tens of millions of dollars to lobbyists typically receive billions.

text: Lessig insists that this does not mean that any legislator has sold his or her vote.[13] One of several possible explanations Lessig gives for this phenomenon is that the money helped elect candidates more supportive of the issues pushed by the big money spent on lobbying and political campaigns. He notes that if any money perverts democracy, it is the large contributions beyond the budgets of citizens of ordinary means; small contributions from common citizens have long been considered supporting of democracy.[20]

text: When such large sums become virtually essential to a politician's future, it generates a substantive conflict of interest contributing to a fairly well documented distortion on the nation's priorities and policies.[citation needed]

text: Beyond this, governmental officials, whether elected or not, often leave public service to work for companies affected by legislation they helped enact or companies they used to regulate or companies affected by legislation they helped enact. This practice is called the "revolving door". Former legislators and regulators are accused of (a) using inside information for their new employers or (b) compromising laws and regulations in hopes of securing lucrative employment in the private sector. This possibility creates a conflict of interest for all public officials whose future may depend on the revolving door.[citation needed]

text: Finance industry and elected officials[edit]

text: Conflicts of interest among elected officials is part of the story behind the increase in the percent of US corporate domestic profits captured by the finance industry depicted in that accompanying figure.

text: From 1934 through 1985, the finance industry averaged 13.8% of U.S. domestic corporate profit. Between 1986 and 1999, it averaged 23.5%. From 2000 through 2010, it averaged 32.6%. Some of this increase is doubtless due to increased efficiency from banking consolidation and innovations in new financial products that benefit consumers. However, if most consumers had refused to accept financial products they did not understand, e.g., negative amortization loans, the finance industry would not have been as profitable as it has been, and the Late-2000s recession might have been avoided or postponed. Stiglitz[22] argued that the Late-2000s recession was created in part because, "Bankers acted greedily because they had incentives and opportunities to do so". They did this in part by innovating to make consumer financial products like retail banking services and home mortgages as complicated as possible to make it easy for them to charge higher fees. Consumers who shop carefully for financial services typically find better options than the primary offerings of the major banks. However, few consumers think to do that. This explains part of this increase in financial industry profits. (Note, however, that Stiglitz has been accused of a conflict of interests and violation of Columbia University transparency policies for failing to disclose his status as a paid consultant to government of Argentina at the same time he was writing articles in defense of Argentina's planned default of over $1billion in bond debt during the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression, and for failing to disclose his paid consultancy to the government of Greece at the same time he was downplaying the risk of Greece defaulting on their debt during the Greek government-debt crisis of 2009.[23])

text: However, it is argued that a major portion of this increase and a driving force behind Late-2000s recession has been the corrosive effect of money in politics, giving legislators and the President of the U.S. a conflict of interest, because if they protect the public, they will offend the finance industry, which contributed $1.7 billion to political campaigns and spent $3.4 billion ($5.1 billion total) on lobbying from 1998 to 2008.[24][25][26]

text: To be conservative, suppose we[tone] attribute only the increase from 23.5% of 1986 through 1999 to the recent 32.6% average to governmental actions subject to conflicts of interest created by the $1.7 billion in campaign contributions. That's 9% of the $3 trillion in profits claimed by the finance industry during that period or $270 billion. This represents a return of over $50 for each $1 invested in political campaigns and lobbying for that industry. (This $270 billion represents almost $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.) There is hardly any place outside politics with such a high return on investment in such a short time.[citation needed]

text: Finance industry and economists[edit]

text: Economists (unlike other professions such as sociologists) do not formally subscribe to a professional ethical code. Close to 300 economists have signed a letter urging the American Economic Association (the discipline’s foremost professional body), to adopt such a code. The signatories include George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate, and Christina Romer, who headed Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.[27]

text: This call for a code of ethics was supported by the public attention the documentary Inside Job (winner of an Academy Award) drew to the consulting relationships of several influential economists.[28] This documentary focused on conflicts that may arise when economists publish results or provide public recommendation on topics that affect industries or companies with which they have financial links. Critics of the profession argue, for example, that it is no coincidence that financial economists, many of whom were engaged as consultants by Wall Street firms, were opposed to regulating the financial sector.[29]

text: In response to criticism that the profession not only failed to predict the 2007-2008 financial crisis but may actually have helped create it, the American Economic Association has adopted new rules in 2012: economists will have to disclose financial ties and other potential conflicts of interest in papers published in academic journals. Backers argue such disclosures will help restore faith in the profession by increasing transparency which will help in assessing economists' advice.[30]

text: Stockbrokers[edit]

text: A conflict of interest is a manifestation of moral hazard, particularly when a financial institution provides multiple services and the potentially competing interests of those services may lead to a concealment of information or dissemination of misleading information. A conflict of interest exists when a party to a transaction could potentially make a gain from taking actions that are detrimental to the other party in the transaction.[31]

text: There are many types of conflicts of interest such as a pump and dump by stockbrokers. This is when a stockbroker who owns a security artificially inflates the price by upgrading it or spreading rumors, and then sells the security and adds short position. They will then downgrade the security or spread negative rumors to push the price back down. This is an example of stock fraud. It is a conflict of interest because the stockbrokers are concealing and manipulating information to make it misleading for the buyers. The broker may claim to have the "inside" information about impending news and will urge buyers to buy the stock quickly. Investors will buy the stock, which creates a high demand and raises the prices. This rise in prices can entice more people to believe the hype and then buy shares as well. The stockbrokers will then sell their shares and stop promoting, the price will drop, and other investors are left holding stock that is worth nothing compared to what they paid for it. In this way, brokers use their knowledge and position to gain personally at the expense of others.[citation needed]

text: The Enron scandal is a major example of pump and dump. Executives participated in an elaborate scheme, falsely reporting profits, thus inflating its stock prices, and covered up the real numbers with questionable accounting; 29 executives sold overvalued stock for more than a billion dollars before the company went bankrupt.[citation needed]

text: Media[edit]

text: Any media organization has a conflict of interest in discussing anything that may impact its ability to communicate as it wants with its audience. Most media, when reporting a story which involves a parent company or a subsidiary, will explicitly report this fact as part of the story, in order to alert the audience that their reporting has the potential for bias due to the possibility of a conflict of interest.

text: The business model of commercial media organizations (i.e., any that accept advertising) is selling behavior change in their audience to advertisers.[32][33][34] However, few in their audience are aware of the conflict of interest between the profit motive and the altruistic desire to serve the public and "give the audience what it wants".

text: Many major advertisers test their ads in various ways to measure the return on investment in advertising. Advertising rates are set as a function of the size and spending habits of the audience as measured by the Nielsen Ratings. Media action expressing this conflict of interest is evident in the reaction of Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corporation, owner of Fox, to changes in data collection methodology adopted in 2004 by the Nielsen Company to more accurately measure viewing habits. The results corrected a previous overestimate of the market share of Fox. Murdoch reacted by getting leading politicians to denounce the Nielsen Ratings as racists.[35][verification needed] Susan Whiting, president and CEO of Nielsen Media Research, responded by quietly sharing Nielsen's data with her leading critics. The criticism disappeared, and Fox paid Nielsen's fees.[36] Murdoch had a conflict of interest between the reality of his market and his finances.

text: Commercial media organizations lose money if they provide content that offends either their audience or their advertisers. The substantial media consolidation that occurred since the 1980s has reduced the alternatives available to the audience, thereby making it easier for the ever-larger companies in this increasingly oligopolistic industry to hide news and entertainment potentially offensive to advertisers without losing audience. If the media provide too much information on how congress spends its time, a major advertiser could be offended and could reduce their advertising expenditures with the offending media company; indeed, this is one of the ways the market system has determined which companies won and which either went out of business or were purchased by others in this media consolidation. (Advertisers don't like to feed the mouth that bites them, and often don't. Similarly, commercial media organizations are not eager to bite the hand that feeds them.) Advertisers have been known to fund media organizations with editorial policies they find offensive if that media outlet provides access to a sufficiently attractive audience segment they cannot efficiently reach otherwise.[citation needed]

text: Election years are a major boon to commercial broadcasters, because virtually all political advertising is purchased with minimal advance planning, paying therefore the highest rates. The commercial media have a conflict of interest in anything that could make it easier for candidates to get elected with less money.[33]

text: Accompanying this trend in media consolidation has been a substantial reduction in investigative journalism,[33] reflecting this conflict of interest between the business objectives of the commercial media and the public's need to know what government is doing in their name. This change has been tied to substantial changes in law and culture in the United States. To cite only one example, researchers have tied this decline in investigative journalism to an increased coverage of the "police blotter".[37] This has further been tied to the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

text: Beyond this, virtually all commercial media companies own substantial quantities of copyrighted material. This gives them an inherent conflict of interest in any public policy issue affecting copyrights. McChesney noted that the commercial media have lobbied successfully for changes in copyright law that have led "to higher prices and a shrinking of the marketplace of ideas", increasing the power and profits of the large media corporations at public expense. One result of this is that "the people cease to have a means of clarifying social priorities and organizing social reform".[38] A free market has a mechanism for controlling abuses of power by media corporations: If their censorship becomes too egregious, they lose audience, which in turn reduces their advertising rates. However, the effectiveness of this mechanism has been substantially reduced over the past quarter century by "the changes in the concentration and integration of the media."[39] Would the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement have advanced to the point of generating substantial protests without the secrecy behind which that agreement was negotiated—and would the government attempts to sustain that secrecy have been as successful if the commercial media had not been a primary beneficiary and had not had a conflict of interest in suppressing discussion thereof?

text: Mitigation[edit]

text: Removal[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2015)

text: Sometimes, people who may be perceived to have a conflict of interest resign from a position or sell a shareholding in a venture, to eliminate the conflict of interest going forward.[citation needed] For example, Lord Evans of Weardale resigned as a non-executive director of the UK National Crime Agency after a tax-avoidance-related controversy about HSBC, where Lord Evans was also a non-executive director. This resignation was stated to have taken place in order to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.[40]

text: "Blind trust"[edit]

text: A politician who owns shares in a company that may be affected by government policy may put those shares in a blind trust with themselves or their family as the beneficiary. It is disputed whether this really removes the conflict of interest, however.

text: Blind trusts may in fact obscure conflicts of interest, and for this reason it is illegal to fund political parties in the UK via a blind trust if the identity of the real donor is concealed.

text: Disclosure[edit]

text: Commonly, politicians and high-ranking government officials are required to disclose financial information—assets such as stock, debts such as loans, and/or corporate positions held, typically annually. To protect privacy (to some extent), financial figures are often disclosed in ranges such as "$100,000 to $500,000" and "over $2,000,000". Certain professionals are required either by rules related to their professional organization, or by statute, to disclose any actual or potential conflicts of interest. In some instances, the failure to provide full disclosure is a crime.

text: However, there is limited evidence regarding the effect of conflict of interest disclosure despite its widespread acceptance.[41] A 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that routine disclosure of conflicts of interest by American medical school educators to pre-clinical medical students were associated with an increased desire among students for limitations in some industry relationships.[42] However, there were no changes in the perceptions of students about the value of disclosure, the influence of industry relationships on educational content, or the instruction by faculty with relevant conflicts of interest.[43]

text: And, an increasing line of research suggests that disclosure can have "perverse effects" or, at least, is not the panacea regulators often take it to be.[44]

text: Recusal[edit]

text: This section is missing information about the fact that recusal is an expectation, and no solution for situations where COI can't be verified, as is the case on WP. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page. (September 2015)

text: Those with a conflict of interest are expected to recuse themselves from (i.e., abstain from) decisions where such a conflict exists. The imperative for recusal varies depending upon the circumstance and profession, either as common sense ethics, codified ethics, or by statute. For example, if the governing board of a government agency is considering hiring a consulting firm for some task, and one firm being considered has, as a partner, a close relative of one of the board's members, then that board member should not vote on which firm is to be selected. In fact, to minimize any conflict, the board member should not participate in any way in the decision, including discussions.

text: Judges are supposed to recuse themselves from cases when personal conflicts of interest may arise. For example, if a judge has participated in a case previously in some other judicial role he/she is not allowed to try that case. Recusal is also expected when one of the lawyers in a case might be a close personal friend, or when the outcome of the case might affect the judge directly, such as whether a car maker is obliged to recall a model that a judge drives. This is required by law under Continental civil law systems and by the Rome Statute, organic law of the International Criminal Court.

text: Third-party evaluations[edit]

text: Consider a situation where the owner of a majority of a public companies decides to buy out the minority shareholders and take the corporation private. What is a fair price? Obviously it is improper (and, typically, illegal) for the majority owner to simply state a price and then have the (majority-controlled) board of directors approve that price. What is typically done is to hire an independent firm (a third party), well-qualified to evaluate such matters, to calculate a "fair price", which is then voted on by the minority shareholders.

text: Third-party evaluations may also be used as proof that transactions were, in fact, fair ("arm's-length"). For example, a corporation that leases an office building that is owned by the CEO might get an independent evaluation showing what the market rate is for such leases in the locale, to address the conflict of interest that exists between the fiduciary duty of the CEO (to the stockholders, by getting the lowest rent possible) and the personal interest of that CEO (to maximize the income that the CEO gets from owning that office building by getting the highest rent possible).