If vowel components are typed before a consonant, they will not be combined with that consonant.īecause the consonants contain the implicit vowel அ, to produce a pure consonant it is necessary to add the Pulli mark ் by typing a semicolon immediately after the consonant. Vowel components that combine with consonants are always typed after the consonants, even when the vowel component appears before (to the left of) the consonant component (such as ெ or ே). Vowel-consonant combinant characters are entered either by typing a specific key for that combinant or by typing the consonant and vowel components separately. The standalone vowel characters which are on the keyboard will produce that character and will not combine with consonants. This is the case whether the vowel component appears to the left or right of, above or below the consonant. Moving the cursor to the left of a combinant character and pressing Delete will erase the whole character, but if you move the cursor to the right of a combinant and press Backspace, only the vowel component will be erased. This means that while two (or more) keystrokes are required to display most consonant-vowel combinants, when you use the arrow keys to move the cursor through the text, only a single keystroke is needed to move past each character. The majority of characters are typed using a combination of keystrokes.Īlthough many Tamil characters are typed using separate keys for consonants and components, the characters that appear on screen will be combinants, which the computer sees as a single character. The visible keyboard layout consists of the eighteen consonants க ங ச ஞ ட ண த ந ப ம ய ர ல வ ழ ள ற ன, the five Grantha consonants and SRii ஸ ஷ ஜ ஹ க்ஷ ஸ்ரீ, eleven vowels அ ஆ இ ஈ உ ஊ எ ஏ ஐ ஒ ஓ, a range of vowel components and combinants characters, and the Pulli ் and Aytham ஃ marks, as well as various punctuation marks.