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This keyboard key combination is killing me

Written on:February 22, 2010
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keycodes

Okay so it’s not killing me but it is making work sometimes very frustrating.

What I am referring to is when I am writing anything and I go to use the Shift key (usually the right one) and accidentally hit the Ctrl key at the same time while hitting the letter key with some other finger I will find what I guess is Unicode letters showing up.

Typically it is when I go to add an apostrophe, a comma, a period or some other punctuation type that this really becomes obvious. The only way to correct this is to save what ever I am doing and close out of the program – whether it be WordPress editor in Chrome or a desktop app like Windows Live Writer or even a simple notepad editor like Notepad++.

Usually it is stuff like this that shows up: É é “ ‘ ¨ ^ ç À. (Save, close, restart) Back again .. see what I mean .. irritating.

Now I don’t know if there is any real cure for this irritation other than trying really hard to be more careful when going to use the Shift key but I can say this – it sucks and really irritates me.

Thanks for your time and you may now carry on with your work day.

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This has been frustrating me for a long time too. Does anyone know what the actual keyboard shortcut that does this is? Is it a toggle?

It's really tough to google for an answer when you don't even know what to call the problem.

I just tried googling "É instead of question mark" and got a few results. Most of them seem to suggest holing down CTRL + SHIFT for a few seconds on their own to reset the keyboard. Since I don't know what key combo triggers the problem, I can't test this out, unfortunately.

I was finally able to test this, and holding down Ctrl + Shift for about 5 seconds did the trick.

This has been frustrating me for a long time too. Does anyone know what the actual keyboard shortcut that does this is? Is it a toggle?

It's really tough to google for an answer when you don't even know what to call the problem.

I just tried googling "É instead of question mark" and got a few results. Most of them seem to suggest holing down CTRL + SHIFT for a few seconds on their own to reset the keyboard. Since I don't know what key combo triggers the problem, I can't test this out, unfortunately.

I was finally able to test this, and holding down Ctrl + Shift for about 5 seconds did the trick.

You could try editing the keyboard layout. Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator is a great tool for that. I've used it successfully to add some hard-to-get typographical characters (e.g., ¬, ½, ¾, ×, ©, ®) to my French keyboard, and the result works nicely with XP, Vista and W7 (including 64-bit versions).

You could try editing the keyboard layout. Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator is a great tool for that. I've used it successfully to add some hard-to-get typographical characters (e.g., ¬, ½, ¾, ×, ©, ®) to my French keyboard, and the result works nicely with XP, Vista and W7 (including 64-bit versions).

That does nothing for me... Are you sure you aren't hitting Alt-Shift by mistake and changing the input keyboard or something funny like that?
.-= Navarr´s last blog ..simpleTAPI is Broken =-.

nope this is definitely an Shift + Ctrl (plus some other key) combination.

That does nothing for me... Are you sure you aren't hitting Alt-Shift by mistake and changing the input keyboard or something funny like that?
.-= Navarr´s last blog ..simpleTAPI is Broken =-.

nope this is definitely an Shift + Ctrl (plus some other key) combination.