# What is wrong with my keyboard at work?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 21, 2024, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550 "2024-11-21T09:20:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@WalterBishop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WalterBishop)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/1 "2024-11-21T09:20:34Z")
My work keyboard has this very annoying glitch. In order to type **£** , I need to press shift+3. However, frequently, _and for no reason at all_, pressing shift+3 stops giving me **£** and starts giving me **#**.
This is a problem because I have to use **£** about three hundred times a day. When shift+3 starts giving me **#** , I have to go online and copy/paste a **£** from the internet and stick it in a notepad file so I can copy/paste it into my reports/spreadsheets/emails whenever I need to. Three hundred times a day.
This Is fucking me right off and I want it to stop. My company’s IT department is entirely populated by morons, burnouts, and jobsworths, so I’m not going to speak to them unless I have no other choice in the world. All I’ll get from them is a week of radio silence and then a solution that doesn’t work. Has anyone else ever experienced this problem? If so, how did you fix it?
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### Author:  [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/2 "2024-11-21T09:29:14Z")
You have accidentally switched keyboards. Press the windows key + space to switch back to your preferred keyboard.
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### Author:  [@WalterBishop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WalterBishop)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/3 "2024-11-21T09:39:27Z")
Amazing! Thank you _so_ much. You’ve no idea how badly that’s been bugging me.
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### Author:  [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/4 "2024-11-21T10:19:02Z")
It’s 4:15 a.m. and I just woke up from a very sad dream. This thread made me so happy. A hugely annoying problem with a simple solution that worked. I think I will be able to go back to sleep again. Thank you for this. 🙂
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/5 "2024-11-21T11:03:41Z")
Jobsworth
Cool! New word!
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/6 "2024-11-21T11:09:52Z")
You’ve gotten the solution, so that’s great. Now, since this is something that happens to me at minimum a couple of times a week, I might be able to provide some insight into the cause.
I work in a European financial hub, touching documents that have been sent to us from all over the continent and beyond. These are commonly edited by people from multiple countries. As a result, the documents are (for lack of a better word) polluted with little bits of localisation cruft, where Microsoft Word is attempting to respect each user’s language and keyboard settings as they perform their revisions. As I page through a given document, I can observe Word’s language label at bottom left regularly changing: English (US), English (UK), French (France), French (Belgium), German (Germany), German (Austria), etc etc etc, reflecting where different people have made amendments in isolated paragraphs here and there, and Word has “helpfully” embedded markers reflecting each user’s preferences for the relevant text.
The most obvious effect of these markers is in spell check. If you have a pararaph in UK English, but it gets reclassified as (say) Swedish, nearly everything will be underlined in red. However, in my experience, these embedded markers also affect the current keyboard setting. Word, quite reasonably, says to itself, this part of the document is in Swiss French, so obviously the editor is working with a Swiss keyboard; let’s switch! And then, when I strike the Y key, I get a Z instead, and vice versa. It doesn’t even require the whole paragraph to be labeled with the alternative language; these little markers seem to be hidden and effectively arbitrary, and it’s just my bad luck the cursor happens to move through one, triggering the change.
A quick touch on Windows + space, and I’m back to my own preference, but it is an irritating little hiccup in my workflow.
If my multi-national work environment is similar to yours, if anything above sounds familiar to you, then this could be why you’re seeing the random switchover.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/7 "2024-11-21T12:16:30Z")
One of the semi-irritating features of Windows’ keyboard switcher is that in addition to the difficult-to-accidentally-hit keyboard combo of Win-space, there is another synonym: Ctrl-shift. Which I tap by accident 50 times a day in my US-centric keyboarding peppered with the occasional need for an accented vowel. There is a way to disable Win-space; there’s no way to disable Ctrl-shift.
I’m going to bet our OP regularly whacks Ctrl-shift unnoticed just as I do.
A different question for the OP is whether they need more than one keyboard mapping to do their work. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. If not, removing every layout except the one they need will comprehensively eliminate the keyboard switching problem.
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### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/8 "2024-11-21T12:49:29Z")
For frequently/repetitively pasted items, consider using the extended clipboard: instead of CTRL+V, use WIN+V. You’ll see a list of the dozen or so most recent things you’ve copied. The oldest items get pushed of the bottom of the list, or you can pin them to the list so they will always be available for pasting.
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/9 "2024-11-21T13:38:23Z")
> [@WalterBishop](#):
>
> I have to use **£** about three hundred times a day.
I’ve _never_ had to use that (what’s it even called?).
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### Author:  [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/10 "2024-11-21T13:40:37Z")
> [@WalterBishop](#):
>
> **£**
> **[Pound sign](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sign)**
>
> The pound sign (£) is the symbol for the pound unit of sterling – the currency of the United Kingdom and its associated Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories and previously of Great Britain and of the Kingdom of England. The same symbol is used for other currencies called pound, such as the Egyptian and Syrian pounds. The sign may be drawn with one or two bars depending on personal preference, but the Bank of England has used the one-bar style exclusively on banknotes since 1975.
> I...
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/11 "2024-11-21T13:57:20Z")
The OP’s choice of insults strongly suggests he’s British.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/12 "2024-11-21T15:33:20Z")
Never mind.
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### Author:  [@WalterBishop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WalterBishop)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/13 "2024-11-21T17:39:36Z")
Tennessean, actually. But I’ve lived in the UK for the last couple of years 🙂
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### Author:  [@WalterBishop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WalterBishop)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/14 "2024-11-21T17:41:16Z")
> [@Cervaise](#):
>
> If my multi-national work environment is similar to yours, if anything above sounds familiar to you, then this could be why you’re seeing the random switchover.
That would explain a lot. My company has offices in the US, Ireland, Luxembourg, and a half dozen other places.
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### Author:  [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/15 "2024-11-21T17:55:35Z")
It’s an interesting little accident that both # and £ are called ‘pound’ as signs. Not that that’s anything to do with the OP’s problem.
By the way, if all else fails, you can also produce £ by [holding down the ‘alt’ key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_code) and typing ‘156’ (or ‘0163’) on the numbers block (on Windows).
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/16 "2024-11-21T20:15:54Z")
Your IT Department might have locked down this bit of configuration, but if your computer is in the UK, with a UK keyboard, and will not be used with a USA keyboard layout, it’s possibly worth just [removing the US language pack](https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/surface/remove-unwanted-keyboard-or-language-from-windows-11-883fbe1c-fcf8-44bc-ba42-a834f486c058)
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### Author:  [@colinfred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colinfred)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/17 "2024-11-21T20:20:44Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#):
>
> For frequently/repetitively pasted items, consider using the extended clipboard: instead of CTRL+V, use WIN+V
Oh my god. The years I’ve been cursing the fact there’s only 1 thing in the clipboard and having to create dumping grounds for whatever is already in there until I need to use it, thank-you for this.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2024, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/18 "2024-11-21T23:20:51Z")
That feature was added to box-stock Windows 6 years ago and apps to do that date back to Windows 95.
IME most gripes that Windows (or Office) can’t do [whatever] are misplaced. The real question to ask is “How do I find and use the built-in feature that does [whatever].”
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2024, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/19 "2024-11-22T23:13:25Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#):
>
> It’s an interesting little accident that both # and £ are called ‘pound’ as signs. Not that that’s anything to do with the OP’s problem.
‘#’ is called ‘hash’ in the UK. I was so confused the first time I heard an automated message telling me to press the ‘pound’ key on my phone keypad. My nemesis is " and @, for some unknown reason they are switched between UK and US keyboard layouts and I’m always needing to type quotes.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2024, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-my-keyboard-at-work/1010550/20 "2024-11-23T01:22:00Z")
See [Proofreading Guidelines - DPWiki](https://www.pgdp.net/wiki/DP_Official_Documentation:Proofreading/Proofreading_Guidelines#insert_char)
for a printable map of many common characters that can all be inserted by the Alt key plus 4 digits from the numeric keypad. (Also a Mac version).
I keep a printed copy handy, and find it very useful on occasions where I need one of those characters.
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