How many keys does a full-size computer keyboard have?

How to get close to this number

Count the blocks in front of you. Twenty-six letters, ten digits, a function row of twelve, a numeric pad of about seventeen, arrows, and the modifiers and punctuation around the edges. Adding those groups gets you close, and the keyboard is right there to check against, which makes this one of the few questions you can verify while answering.

The layout variants in the explanation are what make a single number approximate rather than exact. Dropping the numeric pad removes about seventeen keys, and the smallest layouts strip the function row and arrows as well — so keyboards in common use span roughly sixty to a hundred and four keys while all having the same letters.

Regional layouts move the number too. European layouts typically have one more key than American ones because of an extra character next to the left shift, so a "full-size keyboard" has different key counts in different countries. The figure here specifies the American standard, and that qualifier is not decoration.