Wrong Symbols
 

Here's a bit of a poser:

My keyboard sometimes forgets it is in the UK. It is a standard MS UK keyboard but occasionally it will show a # when I've typed in a £. Other symbols will also be wrong - the @ and " will transpose for example. I get the impression that the keyboard will switch over to American settings and then switch back again for no apparent reason.

Of course it might not be the keyboard, it might be the PC. But I've gone into the Control Panel and checked the regional settings which remain on the standard UK default.

The latest example was in a Word doccument, though I've just opened up another Word doccument and the symbols are behaving normally. But I've also had the problem in the body of an e mail and even when I've been typing a message in Pprune.

Any ideas?

It might be because you have big thumbs and are hitting the 'Hot Keys' to switch between keyboard languages without realising.

For example, on my system, pressing 'Left Alt and Shift' will toggle between installed languages. This will show you how to check your settings for 'Hot Keys'.

Input Languages: Keyboard

Thanks Mr Radar, I'm not sure if I am all thumbs but it seems likely that I have inadvertantly toggled between UK and US English whenever I opened the Word doccument. At least it seems reasonably easy to toggle back to UK English, though I've got to go through Russian first :confused:

Thank you to both BALIX and PPRuNe Radar. This is something that's been irritating and puzzling me for weeks. I've been pondering asking about it here from time to time, without ever quite getting around to it. Now I have the answer!

I think, in my case, this is happening to me because I'm using additional functions on the keyboard that I've never used regularly before, such as Alt+Tab for switching between windows - and my fat fingers are getting in the way.

Go to Control Panel, regional settings, input locales and check how many keyboard layouts you have defined and what the hot keys are for switching between them.