| Wiki: | Backspace is the keyboard key that originally pushed the typewriter carriage one position backwards, and in modern computer displays moves the cursor one position backwards, deletes the preceding character, and shifts back the text after it by one position. In typewriters, a typist would, for example, type a lowercase letter A with acute accent (á) by typing a lowercase letter A, backspace and then the acute accent key (also known as overstrike). This is the basis for such spacing modifiers in computer character sets such as the ASCII caret (^, for the circumflex accent). |
