HELP!!! :( Symbol lock/Wrong symbols - Vista

[|}Bree{\\]

For some strange reason, halfway through my reports i always manage to turn
on some type of character lock. All of a sudden my question marks become
"E's" with the two dots ontop, my quote symbols are turned backwards, and my
number symbols (!@%$, etc) are turned into some regular random character
symbols. I must be accidently hitting some key combination to do this but
it's driving me crazy because I don't know how to undo it. I'm constantly
forced to cut and paste my entire document into a new word file and continue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much.

 

[grammatim]

The "backward quotation marks" suggests that you're switching to a
German keyboard (by pressing LeftAlt+Shift). That combination will
cycle you through all the keyboards installed in your Windows.

If you don't want that feature, then go to Start > Control Panel >
Regional and Language Options > Languages > Details and Delete the
keyboards under "English" that you don't want, and/or Delete the
languages other than English that you don't want.