quite startling and disorienting as the user copes with the sudden violation of their user expectations. Problems occur if a change in the system state happens unnoticed (initiated by the system, or by another person, such as the user who was previously using the machine), or if after some time the user forgets about the state change. Another typical problem is a sudden change of state that interrupts a user's activity, such as focus stealing. In such a situation it can easily happen that the user does some operations with the old state in mind, while the brain has not yet fully processed the signals indicating the state change. A very frustrating type of modality is created by a mode where the user does not find a way out, in other words, where they cannot find how to restore the previous system state. Examples of mode errors The most common source of mode errors may be the Caps Lock key. Other common modes available in PC keyboards are the other lock keys, Num lock and Scroll lock, and often the Insert key. Dead keys for diacritics also create a short-term mode, at least if they don't provide visual feedback that the next typed character will be modified. While the Lock keys on PC keyboards are designed with the intention that they be used as modal keys, the IBM PC hardware design does not require these nor any other specific keys to be modal but allows software to treat any key as modal. (The PC BIOS normally implements Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock states, so the modality of these keys may appear intrinsic, but it is neither technically nor practically necessary to use the BIOS for keyboard I/O, and in fact most modern operating systems do not use BIOS keyboard I/O.) PC users whose language is not based on the Latin alphabet commonly have to interact using two different keyboard layouts: a local one and QWERTY. This gives rise to mode errors linked to the current keyboard layout: quite often, the synchronization of "current layout" mode between the human and the interface is lost, and text is typed in a layout which is not the intended one, producing meaningless text and confusion. Keyboard keys in user interface elements like "(y/n)" can have opposite effect if a program is translated. A frequent example is the sudden appearance of a modal