My windows keyboard is being "clever" with the quote keys - how can I stop it?

Question

I'm using windows 7 on a laptop. On the laptop keyboard, for some reason, the quote key (which has both double and single quote on it) is doing some "clever" annoying things:

1. When I press single-quote (or double-quote), windows doesn't send any characters until I press it twice (resulting in '' or "")
2. When I press it before a vowel, I get some kind of accented character. As I usually only write English, this is annoying.

The backtick/tilde key is subject to similar behaviour.

This is not a duplicate of the linked question because the two problems have completely different solutions. This question was caused by an internationalisation setting being activated; that other question was caused by keys being set to dead.

I have not attempted to set up my computer to process anything other than English. My keyboard appears to be (in so far as these things are standard on laptops) a standard US qwerty keyboard.

How can I stop this happening?

Answer 1

I would first make sure that your "input method" settings is set to "US" (and definitely not "United States-International"). You can do this through the Control Panel. A restart may be required.

For Windows 7:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Click on Clock, Language, and Region, and then Region and Language.
3. Click the Keyboards and Languages tab, and then click Change keyboards.
4. Under Installed services, click Add.
5. Double-click the language you want to add, double-click Keyboard, select the text services options you want to add, and then click OK.

See also:

• Add or change an input language (archived),
  with video and hidden text (click on “Show all”)
• Language bar missing from taskbar, which appears to contain the same information

For Windows 10 and/or Windows 11:

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Click on Clock, Language, and Region and then click on Language.
3. If you don't see a card reading "English (United States)" in the list, click on "Add a language" on the toolbar to add it.
4. On the same row belonging to the "English (United States)" card, make sure there is a line reading "Keyboard layout: US". If it does not (that's the assumption of this answer), click on the "Options" hyperlink belonging to the same line, to the left.
5. In the "Input method" section, click on the "Add an input method" hyperlink to add a keyboard layout called "US". Delete any other installed input methods pertaining English.

See also:

• Add and switch input and display language preferences in Windows 10

Answer 2

In the case of Windows 8/10 (not the question, I know) - these accent keys are active when the keyboard is US International (US INTL), and will be deactivated if you change to US ENG.

You can switch between the two using the short-cut WindowsKey + Space.

Also, if you look at the desktop taskbar (bottom of screen) - to the left of the Date/Time display, you should see a tile displaying the current keyboard (in this case US ENG or US INTL) - click on it to bring up a selector.

Answer 3

You probably inadvertently pressed ctrl shift '.

This is a windows shortcut that affects some applications (examples include: mIRC, gtalk, wordpad, etc) and causes the behavior you are describing. Pressing the shortcut again or restarting the computer will disable it (and hence Dmnisih's answer is incorrect).

Answer 4

Windows 10 here.

+ Space did not work for me. It changed between languages - not keyboards. This is how I solved the problem:

1. Opening Settings.

   • + I _{(like India)}
   • OR Start > Settings

2. "Time & Language"

3. "Region & language"
4. Under "Preferred languages" click on English > Options
5. "Add a keyboard"
6. You need to use the one which says "US" (not "United States-International"):
   

Answer 5

If you press space after the quote then it will be as if you have only the one quote

Answer 6

It typically happens when one accidentally hits the left Ctrl and right Shift keyboard keys.

The way to recovery is in hitting these Ctrl-Shift keys two more times.

It has been illustrated nicely at http://www.pctips.smittystips.com/v_laptop_keyboard_errors.php

Answer 7

Here’s how I fixed it:

1. Open the Regional and Language Options control panel.
2. Click on the Keyboards and Languages tab.
3. Click on the Change Keyboards button.
4. Remove all the installed keyboards until none are left except English US.
5. Restart your computer.

Answer 8

1. If you press " once, followed by Space bar, it gives ' without a space next to it.
2. If you press ", while holding Shift, and then press Space bar, you get " without a space next to it.

3. If you press " followed by a consonant, then you get the same result as (2). For example:

   ", followed by m, gives 'm.

   Shift+", followed by m, gives "m.

Answer 9

For WinXP

Open RUN window (winbutton + r) type the following line and press enter

cmd /c intl.cpl ,1 & taskkill /f /im explorer.exe & explorer

Click "detail"

Highlight and remove all keyboards except US

Click OK twice and you should be done