Ever tried to type out a question, only to get the wrong punctuation mark at the endÉ
See? Pretty embarrassing.
The problem is caused by your keyboard switching its input language — in this case, to French. The question mark is only the most common instance; you may have similar trouble with the slash key or other inputs. Getting stuck in the wrong input language is frustrating, especially if your keyboard or your system isn’t supposed to be multilingual.
Getting stuck happens most often because your keyboard comes with a (supposedly) helpful shortcut for switching between languages. This is great if you do a lot of typing in both English and French, but if not, it’s a liability. Bumping it accidentally will change your input language — possibly without alerting you.
The default shortcut for Canadian keyboards is Ctrl + Shift. (Both these keys can be found in the bottom left-hand corner of your keyboard, which is why it’s easy to hit them by accident.)
To use the shortcut, hold down the Control key and press Shift. While holding down Ctrl, each press of the Shift key will cycle to your next input language, eventually bringing you back around to English. (Try typing the problem character in Word or Notepad to see what language you’re in; not every system displays its language in a conveniently prominent place.) Your system might have two or even three languages to cycle through; for example, many systems will include both “English (US)” and “English (UK)” to accommodate different spellings.
You might find that while you’re holding down Ctrl, the first press of the Shift key has no effect. Just press it again. Ctrl + Shift is a combination also used for other commands, so your language settings might ignore the first one; after that first press of Shift, it should work as described above.