Weird Characters Appearing

[Alex Goodall 1]

When I use keyboard shortcuts to turn italic/bold off and on, I sometimes hit some key-combinations (by mistake) that cause my keyboard to go into a very weird mode.

 

Strange characters appear when I press alphanumeric keys, although they don't actually get entered into the text. 

 

Here's an image of an example after I pressed "g":

 

http://screencast.com/t/rBWUcpBRJLy

 

I've tried various Cntrl/Shift combinations to get it to switch back, but I've not found anything that works.

 

And I've gone into Option to reset the keyboard shortcuts, to no avail.

 

I find I have to re-boot my computer to get back to normality - which is frustrating  .

 

Is there a "re-enter normality" keyboard shortcut??

 

Thanks

 

Alex

 

[gazumped 9,828]

Special characters can be typed by pressing number keys,  but I don't know how you'd do it from a single keypress.  What's your OS and computer manufacturer?  Are you using a third-party keyboard?