Since the standard US keyboard layout in Microsoft Windows offers no way of inputting any sort of diacritic or accent, this makes it unsuitable for all but a handful of languages unless the US International layout is used.
Further, even if the hardware keyboard layout does not match the region that was pre-selected, it can be changed without changing the regional setting. For example, one is given a number of default options for locality that will usually correctly match dialect and keyboard.
However, in more recent editions of Windows, the number of 'settings' options was increased, allowing users to select the correct keyboard and dialect independently.
#STANDARD KEYBOARD LAYOUT SOFTWARE#
This is particularly evident with spelling, where words such as "colour" and "centre" are flagged as being spelled incorrectly by word processing software when the operating system is set to the US setting. People in these countries were as a result required to choose a system setting inconsistent with their localised version of English, thereby causing traditional British English to fall out of favour. In many English-speaking jurisdictions (e.g., Canada, Australia, the Caribbean nations, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, New Zealand, and South Africa), orthography has traditionally conformed more closely to British English usage, while these countries have chosen to use the United States keyboard layout. While adequate for users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland, this solution caused difficulty in other English-speaking countries.