I can't type apostrophe or quotation marks

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Level 1

8 points

I can't type apostrophe or quotation marks

Hi there!

I got a problem which I can't resolve for now. It appeared some time ago but I didn't pay much attention to it. Apparently I cannot type special characters like apostrophe or quotation marks in some programs, a second after I type them they are replaced by a letter. The same goes for the browser. From time to time some special characters are replaced with letters which annoys me a lot.

At first I thought that it is a unicode problem or smth like that. Pardon me if that sounds stupid Im not so much computer genius. I tried reinstalling OSX - didn't help. Tried to google for solutions, most of the things I found were for the similar thing on windows and were saying it's about input preferences. I checked there, doesn't seem to be an issue. I have no clue what to do now.

Couple days ago this change of characters started happening in Pages and Numbers where I was doing some important documents. Dunno if this is important, but I have 2 languages set on my Macbook Pro - English (main) and Russian. The problem stays in both.

Please help!

MacBook Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3), mid 2010

Posted on Feb 14, 2018 10:09 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,408 points

Feb 14, 2018 10:26 AM in response to artsnow7

Go to system prefs/keyboard/input sources and make sure you have only US or ABC on the list. Make sure you remove US Internationsl PC, which can cause the behavior you describe.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,408 points

Feb 14, 2018 12:59 PM in response to artsnow7

Uncheck Use Smart Quotes and see if that fixes it.

I suspect a bad font. Do you have this problem using every font?

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,408 points

Feb 14, 2018 2:04 PM in response to artsnow7

Try applications/font book/file/restore standard fonts

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,408 points

Feb 15, 2018 3:25 AM in response to artsnow7

You may have accidentally installed a bad font masquerading as arial, which is hopefully now disabled.

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Answer 5

artsnow7 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2018 11:10 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hey, Tom

I tried this before your comment and tried again now. Deleted Russian keyboard and left only ABC. This resolved the issue with quotation marks but not with apostrophe or browser. I restarted then added Russian keyboard back and now quotation marks work there again. Apostrophe still doesn't work. A second after I type it, it changes to T.

Note this: in browser it changes slash or whatever character should be there with a random Russian letter (even though I deleted it)

What do I do now?

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Answer 6

artsnow7 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2018 11:18 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Oh wait. This didn't help. I also changed the type of quotation marks when was checking preferences. Now I set it back and they still are changed to letter. Seems like the problem is exactly with this type of quotation marks:

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Answer 7

artsnow7 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2018 1:23 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Some progress... Yea, you're probably right. I tried couple other fonts - everything works. I didn't check all, but Arial definitely does that switch of character.

Should I try to delete Arial and reinstall it?

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Answer 8

artsnow7 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2018 1:45 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Nope. Didn't help

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Answer 9

artsnow7 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2018 2:00 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

So strange. Now it's fine in pages and chrome but still doesn't work properly in Numbers. 😕

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Answer 10

artsnow7 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2018 2:04 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

OMG. I reopened files and now seems like everything's fine and working. But still I don't understand what was wrong. Was it my fault? Did I do smth I wasn't supposed to?

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Answer 11

artsnow7 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 15, 2018 3:25 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thank you so much!

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I can't type apostrophe or quotation marks

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