# UK Keyboard does not make inverted commas (aka single curly quotes).



## jczeroman (Oct 24, 2007)

I have a UK keyboard and live in the UK. Every other keyboard I have ever used in the UK makes inverted commas (‘’) by pressing the key one right and one down of the p key (which has the @ symbol and ' symbol). No matter I what I do with the region and language options, I can only get an apostrophe (') out of this key and not an inverted comma/single curly quote(‘’).

Do I actually have to press ALT+0145 and ALT+0146 every time I want to make a single curly quote or am I missing something obvious here?

Any help on this would be appreciated! I have been banging my head on the brick wall of google for hours now.


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## jo-briggs (Jan 29, 2005)

That's not a UK keyboard - The UK keyboard has* " *above the *2* and the *@ *above the* '* - What you have appears not to be a standard UK keyboard.


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## NoelDP (Aug 5, 2012)

What the OP is talking about is smart-quotes.
This is an option which can be turned on or off, depending on the context, font, and default settings.
(In some cases, such as the CMD interfaxce, smartquotes have a very different meaning and will destroy a carefully-crafted code - as I keep being reminded!)

Why do I see strange characters in messages? « windows live mail stuff relates


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## jczeroman (Oct 24, 2007)

jo-briggs said:


> That's not a UK keyboard - The UK keyboard has* " *above the *2* and the *@ *above the* '* - What you have appears not to be a standard UK keyboard.


Hi, thanks for the reply. I may not have been very clear. my keyboard does have double quotation marks above the 2 and an @ symbol above the '. It is a UK keyboard.

On other UK keyboards, when I press the "'/@" key, it creates single curly quotes. This keyboard (or perhaps my set up) doesn't, and I have no idea how to make it do so. The only way right now that I can get single curly quotes is to do ALT+0145 and ALT+0146.


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## jo-briggs (Jan 29, 2005)

Some cleverer person than me on this forum will no doubt tell you how to program one of the "F" keys to do the job.

You might get some help here Google


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## jczeroman (Oct 24, 2007)

I understand that I can do various work-arounds to get what I want, but I want to know _what the root of the actual problem is_ and _why_ I have what appears to be a unique problem. I don't really think it is a good idea to customize on top of customisations, especially when I don't know what exactly is wrong in the first place. That seems like a recipe for problems down the road.

I highly doubt that every other keyboard I have ever used in the United Kingdom inputs single curly quotes for the "'/@" key because each and every one of them was manually reprogrammed in this way.


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## jo-briggs (Jan 29, 2005)

You may find that it is program dependent, if here I hit the ' key I get the apostrophe, exactly what I would expect to get; however, if I do the same in WORD I get one or other of 2 results, either the apostrophe if within a word *it's* the normal thing, if on the other hand I press it either side of a word I get what you call _single curly quotes_ - For example ‘test’ which I cut and pasted from WORD, this is what I assume that you are after, and what works on my keyboard; so as I said, the result may be program or position dependendent, or indeed 'both' which is how it works in this forum.


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## jczeroman (Oct 24, 2007)

Right, that's helpful. What you experience is exactly what I experience on every UK keyboard. So that is what I'm aiming for.

On my keyboard, the key in question always makes the *it's* apostrophe rather than the curly quotes. This is the case in word, open office, email clients, firefox, etc. The ONLY way I can get a curly quote is by the ALT+ method I mentioned earlier.

So, for example, did you go and program word and other programs to automatically give you the curly quotes or does it default that way? IF so, I want to figure out why my keyboard isn't defaulting and what I can do to make this happen.


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## jo-briggs (Jan 29, 2005)

No - It's always been like that. Have you tried Control _Panel>Regions & Language_? Maybe you have an alternative keyboard setup. I assume that you are not using the keyboard that came with your computer, so it may be that that keyboard can be set up to do what you want - What make of keyboard is it?


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## jczeroman (Oct 24, 2007)

I have done all of the language/region fixes that I know of. But you are right, this is not a keyboard purpose-built for this pc. It's a Microsoft wireless multimedia keyboard 1.1 bought in the UK.

The only think that I can think of is that there is some issue with the OS, as the OS is from the US. But all my language/region/keyboard settings are UK settings.


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## jo-briggs (Jan 29, 2005)

Aha! Therein may lie your problem, US OS and UK keyboard I think that it is possible to reprogram the keys, but I don't know how.

There are several English keyboards listed; Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Canada etc.; you could work your way through the list and see if one of the set-ups fits the bill.


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