Thread: What is the purpose of the Alt Gr button

I have sought high and low in the manuals for all three of my computers, in Computeractive and in all sorts of computer books, but I have never seen any reference to the Alt Gr key on my keyboard, until I found it used in a recent issue of Computeractive. What is it for?

The key is a hangover from a bygone age of computing the modern PC keyboard is derived from the original computer keyboards designed back in the 1970s Those keyboards were used to control huge 'mainframe' computers that had lots of functions.
Because there was no Windows in those days, everything had to be done using the keyboard, and so the keyboards were covered with lots of symbols, sometimes two or three on each key.

To access them, you'd have to use a combination of key presses by using a modifier key such as Ctrl, Alt or Alt Gr. The Alt Gr originally stood for 'alternate graphic' and by pressing it you could get an alternate symbol printed on the key top. Times have changed and those symbols are no longer printed on the keys, but the Alt Gr key remains because it's still used by some older applications You can also use it in Windows to type some special characters. There's more information, including a list of characters in various languages that can be typed using the Alt Gr key, on Wikipedia.