I’ve recently had issues with my double quotes not working as I would have expected them to. For example I would hit a quote or double quote button and nothing would show up until the next key was hit. It would then put quotes around what ever it was that I was typing… unless I hit the “A” key, then it would use insert a non US alphabet character. Being a developer it drove me nuts. After digging around in my editor’s preferences and settings, finding nothing I started digging around in the Windows settings. Come to find out, if you have more than one type of keyboard language, you can swap keyboard layouts by hitting Left Alt + Shift. I must have done this at some point.

The Fix

To resolve the issue open up your control panel and double click on “Region and Language”, click on the Keyboards and Languages tab, then click the Change keyboards… button. That will get you to this little window.

Seeing as how I really don’t type in any other language other than US English I removed (by clicking on the name and then clicking the Remove button) everything except the services EN with a keyboard of US. Once you’ve removed everything you don’t use, click Apply and then OK. Its probably a good idea to close everything down and restart Windows for it to take full affect.

Hope this helps prevent premature baldness.