Where do keyboard shortcuts come from?

Keyboard shortcuts, like [Ctrl-C] were created at Xerox in the 1970s, and include functions like cut, copy, and paste.

But the crown jewel of shortcuts, Control-Alt-Delete, was created in the early 1980s by David Bradley, an IBM engineer.

It only took 5 minutes to dream up the iconic combination, which became a hit among IBM employees, then got programmed into the company’s original PC.

• Make shortcuts easy to remember.
• Ensure they make sense with existing keyboards.
• Develop combinations that don’t trigger other shortcuts.

They also need to factor in how frequently a shortcut will be used. Shortcuts that are used more often tend to include simpler key combinations (e.g., copy and paste), while those that are less frequently tend to include more keys (e.g., force-quitting an app).