by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/02/13 10:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/02/13/7669132.aspx
Over in the Suggestion Box, Amie asked:
What exactly does Ctrl - V stand for and how did it come about.. besides the fact that the V is near X and C? What does the V stand for in the shortcut? Can someone help me figure this one out please?
Thank you!
-- Amie (:
And regular reader Jan Kučera responded (also in the Suggestion Box, where he had moments ago posted an unrelated question that I have not gotten to yet:
To Amie regarding Ctrl+V meaning:
... 'Paste' in Czech is 'Vložit' ... so ... maybe? ..hm? :-D
Cute!
But I am inclined to doubt that the Czech language had much to do with it. :-)
As far as I can see, both CTRL+X and CTRL+V owe their ubiquitous assignments to their proximity to CTRL+C, which is a very sensible choice for the copy operation....
Sorry about that, Jan!
This post brought to you by C (U+0043, aka LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C)
Roland on 13 Feb 2008 10:11 AM:
Xut, Copy, Vaste ;-)
John Cowan on 13 Feb 2008 12:30 PM:
Not to mention Zundo, which is right there next to the others.
AFAIR, these conventions came from the Mac; Þe Olde Windows Way back in 3.1 was Shift+Ins for Paste, Ctrl+Ins for Copy, and Shift+Del for Cut. Amusingly, both sets of conventions
Mike Dimmick on 13 Feb 2008 12:45 PM:
I've always used the aid that X looks like scissors, so Cut, C is the first letter of Copy, and V looks like inserting something between two other things, so Paste. Or at least I did to begin with, 15 years of using Windows since they were added in 3.1 has rather drilled them into my memory.
I could never remember the Ctrl/Shift+Ins/Del pairings from IBM Common User Access. Shamelessly stealing the Apple keybindings was a great idea ;)
And of course Z is the last letter of the alphabet (well, in English anyway) so is an appropriate key to go back to the last version.
Rick Schaut on 13 Feb 2008 1:14 PM:
Back in the old pen-and-paper days of editing documents, people marked the location of inserted text with a "V" in a slightly super-scripted position relative to the base line. I suspect the Ctrl-V for Insert might well have had something to do with that practice.
andreas on 14 Feb 2008 1:07 AM:
Arie Roos on 14 Feb 2008 7:54 AM:
And most likely at the time of defining CTRL+V, CTRL+P was already in use for Print
Scott on 14 Feb 2008 9:18 PM:
Of course, when Microsoft borrowed the Macintosh keybindings for cut, copy, and paste, they didn't have a Command key, so they used the Control instead. This leads to a very unfortunate conflict in terminal programs, where Ctrl-C means stop the current command.
Jan Kučera on 30 May 2008 4:19 PM:
I can't help myself, but still using the Shift+Delete, Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert... and I am 23! :) And I really really hope they will work forever, or at least as long as I will be using keyboard for input. ;-)
Do you use Ctrl+X,C,V? How does it happen that one migrates after so many years?
Phillip on 15 Oct 2011 4:49 PM:
verisimilitude (an authentic copy)
Ulla on 3 Sep 2012 4:43 AM:
V stands for "verbatim". You Ctrl C it for "copy" and then what you copied is "verbatim" copied somewhere else when you hit "Ctrl V".
Michael S. Kaplan on 3 Sep 2012 11:38 AM:
That would be a massive backformation. :-)