4

I've always been used to pressing the ' and " button twice to get the respective characters. But recently, it changed without my involvement.

Now, when I press the button, I get 2 of them immediately. Aside from being just a pain in the gluteus maximus, it also doesn't allow me to type apostrophe characters.

I don't know when this started, but I believe it had something to do with the last big update, which required rebooting several times. Since this might be an intended feature by Microsoft, I don't know if it's fixable, so any and all answers would be appreciated.

9
  • Which characters need apostrophes? Or do you mean accents? Check the keyboard layout first. Aug 10, 2016 at 9:47
  • I mean characters like these --> é. It's not on my keyboard
    – wessltov
    Aug 10, 2016 at 11:46
  • 1
    Yeah, that's an accent and done with the accent button. Apostrophe is completely different, though many people abuse accents as apostrophes :G ` and ´ vs ' Aug 10, 2016 at 11:47
  • I hope I'm not expected to call everything by it's correct name, seeing as I'm Dutch. I'd still like to be able to type these characters
    – wessltov
    Aug 10, 2016 at 11:49
  • 1
    No, of course not. Just making sure people know exactly what buttons are being talked about :) Aug 10, 2016 at 11:50

2 Answers 2

11

I assume you’re currently using the “US – QWERTY” layout. What you probably want is the US International keyboard. It has all the so-called “dead keys” you want:

  • ' + vowel → vowel with acute accent, e.g., '+e → é
  • ` + vowel → vowel with grave accent, e.g., `+e → è
  • " + vowel → vowel with diaeresis (or umlaut), e.g., "+e → ë
  • ^ + vowel → vowel with circumflex accent, e.g., ^+e → ê
  • ~ + a, n or o → letter with tilde, e.g. ~+n → ñ, ~+o → õ
  • ' + c → ç (Windows)

To enable it, go to Settings → Time & language → Region & language (sidebar). There, select the language (English, Dutch, whatever) you want to modify, click “Options”. Then, under “Keyboards” add the “United Status-International” layout. Then remove the regular US layout.

4
  • I tried this (changed setting and rebooted), but it didn't work. I actually changed all my languages to the United States-International qwerty, but no luck with this either
    – wessltov
    Aug 11, 2016 at 2:30
  • Thanks for your answer :D it fixed the quotation mark problem of my keyboard. I had to press twice in a row to get two ' ' (instead of once to get one ') which bothered me many days. Now it's back to normal
    – Shaohua Li
    May 3, 2019 at 8:48
  • This solution didn't work at all for me. Please help! Jun 21, 2020 at 4:59
  • If you want to just get the character ie ' you can follow it with a space.
    – matt
    Mar 16, 2023 at 20:28
-1

In Windows 10, go to Languages, click your preferred language (English) and then Options. Ensure that United States QWERTY keyboard is being used instead of United States-International QWERTY. Add it if you need to. Delete the international keyboard and Viola! No more annoying accents.

1
  • This appears to be the opposite of what the OP asked & already has an answer [though not accepted]
    – Tetsujin
    Aug 16, 2020 at 10:16

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .