How to convert Japanese characters into roman characters when you accidentally type an English word with Japanese input turned on (on Windows)

Question

In Windows I often find myself trying to write an English word, but with the Japanese Input method selected (unintentionally). So what I get is something like this えぁmpれ. At the moment, I just press escape and then start writing again. Ideally there would be a shortcut I could use to convert it automatically. There is on OSX:

control+;

Is there such a thing for Windows?

Answer 1

The function keys F6-F10 are used to convert input to various formats:

• F6: convert to Hiragana

  ホワイト → ほわいと

• F7: convert to full width Katakana

  ほわいと → ホワイト

• F8: convert to half width Katakana. Probably not desired

  ホワイト → ﾎﾜｲﾄ

• F9: convert the current input to full width romaji. Probably not desired, too. Press again for all-capitals, then again for proper noun capitalization:

  ホワイト → ｈｏｗａｉｔｏ → ＨＯＷＡＩＴＯ → Ｈｏｗａｉｔｏ

• F10: convert to half width romaji. Press again for all-capitals, and again for proper noun capitalization:

  ホワイト → howaito → HOWAITO → Howaito

If you forget the above then just use Windows+forward slash (/) which is the shortcut for "Begin IME reconversion".

If you only want to convert the next input to romaji you can just type a capital character.

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Some other useful shortcuts for typing Japanese on English keyboard

• Ctrl+Caps Lock: switch to Hiragana
• Alt+Caps Lock: if in alphanumeric mode change to Hiragana, then switch to Katakana
• Shift+Caps Lock: switch between full-width Hiragana ↔ full-width alphanumeric (romaji)
• Alt + ` (Grave Accent): switch between kana ↔ half-width alphanumeric (romaji)
• Alt+Shift: switch between languages (IMEs)

Answer 2

Press F10 to revert it to Latin script. There is also F9, but this will result in full-width characters, which is usually not appropriate when typing English.