Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
On Stackexchange sites I quite often have to use the backtic which can be got at usually as the key beside 1 (left side ) however when I press it the first time the ` doesn't appear until I press it again (at which point I get `` (2) or if I press another key such as a space.
Is there a historical reason for this or is it just my keyboard?
This is either your keyboard or the software you are using (we can't see that from here). So it is not specific to StackExchange sites.
This is done because the software supports another feature: pressing the apostroph or the backtick followed by another letter (most common a vowel) is an easy way to write diacritical characters like é and è.
Because of this feature the software cannot immediately display the apostroph or backtick, it has to wait for the next character to determine what your intention is. Only when you press the next backtick it knows that you intended to enter a backtick.
This is not bad in itself: just remember to type the backtick twice, then press cursor left, then type what comes between them. That way you won't forget the closing backtick.
This is akin to typing the { } brackets in the C programming language first before entering the code that goes in between. There, having a closing bracket at the correct location is much more important.
This is not only done with apostroph and backtick, but e.g. also with double quotation marks (" and e gives ë) and even with consonants (, and C gives Ç).
CTRL + SHIFT changes the layout. Additionally if you add a language, ALT + SHIFT changes between keyboard language settings. By using US International, you indeed get the behavior from the question. Setting it to United States will remove it.
This is called a dead key. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key
It depends on your local settings (i.e. Keyboard layout).
Other answers have mentioned that this can be a keyboard layout thing, but I felt that a concrete example might be useful, so:
On Windows I generally use the "English (UK) Extended" keyboard layout, which has better support for typing accented characters, but means I have to press backtick twice to get the ` character. If I switch to the basic "English (UK)" keyboard layout, I only have to press backtick once. So the latter keyboard is perhaps better for some uses (such as coding), even though the extended version is better for others (such as writing).
If you have more than one keyboard layout installed, on Windows you can use Ctrl + Shift to switch between them.
CTRL + SHIFT to switch between Extended and non-Extended (as mentioned by LPChip) helped me tremendously!
ALT + SHIFT to switch between languages, but I didn't realise that CTRL + SHIFT switches keyboard layouts! I've added a note about that.
'MODIFIER LETTER GRAVE ACCENT' (U+02CB)which shows as a backtick, but isn't one. This is likely a bug, but it took me some time to figure out why my inline code suddenly wasn't rendered anymore. Change to US layout, is what I'm telling you!SPACEdoes not insert a space but only `, so it may help to get around this inconvenience. source