For much of the 20th century, a battle waged between words and icons on keyboards. While America embraced text, Europe relied on iconography for universal understanding across languages. Early IBM machines like the 1965 1130 computer used unusual symbols, such as a unique mark for space, and the Selectric typewriter featured icons like "Express" for fast backspace and "Index" for line feed. As office PC users rejected confusing symbols, text labels largely won out. Only four symbols achieved widespread acceptance on modern PC/Windows keyboards: ⇧ for Shift, ↵ for Enter, ⇥ for Tab, and an arrow for Backspace.

However, many beautiful and interesting symbols were lost. These included icons for Print Screen (a CRT screen turning into paper), key beep (easing the typewriter transition), and Reverse Tab. Home historically meant "return to the top left corner" or "clear the screen." Symbols for Insert and Delete appeared inspired by proofreader marks, alongside marks for invert video, blinking, underline, and a striking symbol for "delete word." Notably, some survive today in Unicode, specifically ⎀, ⎃, ⎁, and ⎂, the last two representing contiguous and non-contiguous underline.