Whew! Glad that mystery is solved. Thanks for letting us know. We can sleep better tonight.

I figured it out. It’s the paragraph setting under the advanced toolbar. When the path statement shows “path=p”, it’s going to back up over a preceding space and remove the last letter. You go into paragraph mode when you hit enter after a sentence, so I just have to remember to display the advanced editor toolbar and then then turn off paragraph.

I’ve also found in Firefox that Better GReader and Better GMail can occasionally cause some strange behavior (although not necessarily in WordPress).

I’m not questioning your expertise. Whatever is wrong is not reproducible. I just backspaced to correct the spelling of that word. I recommend you do the following:

1. If you’ve been doing this for that long, I’m sure you are using FireFox. If not, try that. Oh, and try it on a totally different computer to see if it is reproducible.

2. One by one disable all add-ons and scripts in your browser, restarting the browser between each disable.

3. Get a free blog (throw away blog) on WordPress.com and see if it does the same thing there.

4. Start your computer in safe mode with no TSRs running. See if it still does the same thing.

5. One by one, disable your WordPress Plugins and see if it continues to do the same thing. If you’ve hacked the core or added any Javascript to WordPress, disable those, too.

6. Ask for more help on the WordPress Support Forum if none of these things help.

This is not normal behavior. WordPress has no control over the keyboard as far as I know. Something is interfering with the keystroke behavior for the backspace key, and odds are, it ain’t WordPress.

Good luck and let me know what you come up with.

Trust me, I’ve been using computers since I started on a mainframe in 1978 and a PC in 1982. But for some reason, when I use the editor in WordPress to post a new entry, and I type “word “, and then hit the backspace, it removes the space and the letter ‘d’. I don’t know why, but I wish it wouldn’t. I was just hoping it was a setting I could change.

Jeff.

Maybe I don’t understand you. The backspace key backs over the last letter or space typed in EVERY word processing program and software and typewriter I’ve ever used. The arrow keys move back or forwards without removing text. The Delete key removes in a forward direction. So whatever you are experiencing is what I’ve been experiencing for decades. WordPress does not interact with the keyboard in any way.

If you are having a problem with WordPress skipping a character space and deleting the next character space, the problem is with your computer or keyboard. Keyboards get dirty or the battery (if there is one) gets low and does weird things. When my cordless keyboard battery gives up, only every other character or so types. That’s when I replace the battery.

Maybe I don’t understand you, but the backspace deleting from right to left is normal.

I was hoping to find help with one of my annoyances with WordPress. When I hit the backspace key, and a space is immediately preceding where the cursor is located, why does WordPress have to go back past the space and remove the last letter I typed? Maybe I just wanted to add a letter at the end? Is there a way to get WordPress to behave like every other word processor out there that backspace means just that? Back a space up?

Thanks,

Jeff.