We all struggle with the keyword system now that we don’t use it all the time. It can be hard to remember where the 200+ functions are on those 40 keys. Here’s some of my tips to maybe help you remember where some of them are.
The ones you use often, you will just know, but those less used can be tricky. Sure there are the labels, but sometimes they can be hard to read or just find. The real challenge is when you’re using an emulator and don’t have any labeling at all.
- PRINT and related keys: print is easy on the P key, and TAB is not bad as the E mode on the same key, however, I use AT far more often. It’s on the I key nearby as symbol shift, which you should probably keep a finger over in general. The semicolon is common in a print statement, and it’s the symb on the O key next to P. The quote is very common as well, and it’s the symb on the P key itself. Back on the ZX80, PRINT was on the O key (maybe as the “output” command?) and nothing on the P key.
- POKE, PEEK – Poke is a command, so it’s the keyword on O (pOke), and peek is a function, so it’s the related E mode keyword on the same key. OUT is similar to poke, and starts with O, so it’s the shift+E mode keyword.
- INPUT – Starts with I and is the compliment of output, which the O key sort of is if you think of the shift+E mode keyword on O is OUT, and you see that shift+E for I is the IN function.
- IF, THEN – If is on the U key next to the I key you might think of first, but that’s used up with Input. THEN is on the G key as a symb shift. It’s commonly followed by GO TO, which is easy to remember on the G key, so remember that THEN is it’s symbol shift.
- GO TO, GO SUB – The more common GO TO is the G keyword, so remember the less common GO SUB is the H key next to it, and its partner RETURN is the Y key above H.
- LET, LIST, LOAD – Let is the most common, so it gets the L keyword, with List being next on the K key next to it, and Load less common on J next to that. I associate list with K because that’s the main cursor you see when you’re looking at a listing. There was an emulator called “JPP” which were the keys you typed to do: LOAD “”.
- RAND, RND, RUN, REM – Run is, of course, on the R key, so RAND gets to be on the next key over, the T key. Since RND is related and a function, it gets to be the E mode keyword on T. Since INT is often used with RND, it makes some sense to be next to it, so it’s the E mode keyword on the R key. REM also gets to be near R on the E key (think rEm).
- PLOT, DRAW – These are on the same keys, Q and W, as PLOT and UNPLOT of the ZX81. At least we can maybe think: draW, with PLOT being next to it.
- COPY, CLEAR, CONTINUE, CLS – A lot of C commands but only one C key. CONT gets the C key, even though it’s one I rarely use, so it makes CLS on the V key next to it hard to remember. CLEAR being on the X key makes it sort of “X-ing the memory”, and COPY is just hanging out on the Z key no one else wanted, but at least it’s in a row with most of the other C commands.
- FOR, TO, STEP, NEXT – FOR on the F key will soon be followed by TO, which is the symb shift F. STEP is sometimes used, and is the symb shift of the adjacent D key. The loop ending NEXT is the primary keyword on the N key.
- READ, RESTORE, DATA, DIM – These are lesser used, but they are all together as the E mode keywords on A, S, and D (reAd, reStore, and Data). DIM is the D key’s primary keyword.
- SIN, COS, TAN – these are in a row as the E mode functions of Q, W, and E, with their inverses being the shift+E mode functions of the same keys.
- INK, PAPER, FLASH, BRIGHT, OVER, INVERSE, BORDER – These are almost all the shift+E mode keywords of the bottom row keys X, C, V, B, N, and M with BORDER being the primary keyword on B and BRIGHT the symb+E mode key under it. As for the rest, there’s no great way to remember which key. FLASH is on the “slash” key, but you have to remember / is symb+V.
- Top row symbol shift characters – A maddening arrangement when using an emulator is that the symb shift characters on the top row are slightly different than a modern keyboard, in particular, the parens, ampersand, and underscore are off by one key.
- Equal, +, -, *, / – Equal as symb+L is natural as it comes soon after the LET keyword. It’s not hard to see how + and -, on the K and J keys to its left, also commonly appear in a LET statement as well. It seems odd then that the * and / are not near these but are next to each other on the B and V keys, probably because they wanted the comma and period to be on the N and M keys.
- ^, SQR, CIRCLE – The Spectrum used an up arrow symbol for the circumflex character and used it for raise to power operator. You might commonly use it to square a number, and so the E mode function SQR for square root is a related operation. The E+symb keyword being CIRCLE is related to the word “square” of “square root”. A stretch, I know.
- AND, OR – I remember AND is symb+Y because “and” is “y” in Spanish. I remember that OR is just next to that.
- ABS, SGN – You could think of ABS being the E mode function on the G key because GO TO is an ABSolute branch. SGN is related to ABS and so on the key next to it.
- EXP, LN – EXP is on the “X” key which is good, and its inverse function LN is on the key next to it.
- Misc. – The DELETE command is the delete key in K mode, so pretty easy. FORMAT is its symb+E mode token, which is delete-like. We all know that NEW is on the A key, and I always wish they’d swapped it with STOP on the symbol shift so it was harder to accidentally wipe your program out. PI is mmm good, so it’s E mode on the M key. Comma and period are symbol shift N and M because they are usually on keys to the right of those.
- Some symb+E mode keys on the top row: Have you noticed that CAT is on the 9 key? Nine lives? POINT is on 8 under the right pointing arrow. ERASE is on 7 which is the color white, like “white” out. As for the others, I don’t have any handy mnemonic.