Weird problem in windows XP - apostrophes and double quotes don't show up until the key has been pressed twice

Question

When I type a single double quote, no character is displayed. if I type another character, the apostrophe and the next character appear at the same time. This applies to double quotes (") and apostrophes ('). What could possibly be causing this?

This occurs in all applications I have tested - wordpad, firefox, ms word etc.

Answer 1

This is because you have a keyboard where ' ~ " are set to dead-key setting.

The behaviour of a dead key is ... well... to be dead! So no reaction when you press it. Then you can assign different behaviour on the next keystroke like accentuation, or displaying any kind of character you've programmed it for. And usually, when a keystroke has no meaning after a dead key you have a standard behaviour that is to display the character of the dead key. And of course the next character appears as well because it's in the buffer.

So you can follow advices of other poster on how to change your keyboard (look at which KB you had configured). You can also get the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to map a new keyboard and see how you can program dead keys.

Answer 2

Check your keyboard settings in Region/Language. If it is set to non-English/US it may be expecting accented characters, formed by pressing the accent (', ", ^, etc) and then a character.

Answer 3

I checked my settings and they are set to English/US but the problem persisted. Then after closing the dialogue an icon appeared on the task bar allowing me to change from EN/International keyboard to EN/US Keyboard - Problem fixed!

Answer 4

The reason is because you are using US-international keyboard.

Here is how to change this:

1. From the control panel in Windows7, Click "Change keyboards or other input methods"
2. Click the "Keyboards and Languages" tab
3. Click "Change Keyboards..."
4. AT THIS POINT MAKE SURE YOU ARE USING "English (United Kingdom) - US" as the default input language, meaning you set the keyboard to US, not US-international

Answer 5

The problems lies in the Input Language.

To change between Input Languages, press Left Alt + Shift. This should solve your problem.

If it doesn't work, do it this way:

Search for "language" in the start menu.

Click "Change keyboards or other input methods".

Click the "Keyboards and Languages" tab.

Click "Change Keyboards..."

Click the "Advanced Key Settings" tab.

Click "Change Key Sequence".

Assign a shortcut to Switch Input Language.

Answer 6

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560/en-us