Keyboard not recognising shift key

when am in gnome everything works well - and i can press shift to capitalise and to get an exclamation point etc. i have installed bspwm, i3, and awesome. for each of these desktops the shift key fails to work - but gnome is fine.

when i type in -

localectl status
System Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
VC Keymap: gb
X11 Layout: gb

which is correct. how can i get the shift key to work.

Welcome to ask.:fedora:edora @gideon

Could you please give us more info’s as (to see your hardware) :

inxi -Fzx in terminal and post the output as </> Preformatted text here.

here it is

System:
  Kernel: 5.18.16-200.fc36.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 2.37-27.fc36 Desktop: GNOME v: 42.3.1
    Distro: Fedora release 36 (Thirty Six)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: PRIME A320M-R v: Rev X.0x
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 5601
    date: 07/10/2020
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3200G with Radeon Vega Graphics
    bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Zen/Zen+ note: check rev: 1 cache: L1: 384 KiB
    L2: 2 MiB L3: 4 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1314 high: 1448 min/max: 1400/3600 boost: enabled
    cores: 1: 1256 2: 1251 3: 1304 4: 1448 bogomips: 28745
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Picasso/Raven 2 [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Mobile Series]
    vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: GCN 5 bus-ID: 07:00.0
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.20.14 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.3 driver: X:
    loaded: amdgpu unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa gpu: amdgpu
    resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics (raven LLVM 14.0.0 DRM 3.46
  5.18.16-200.fc36.x86_64)
    v: 4.6 Mesa 22.1.4 direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio
    vendor: ASUSTeK PRIME B450M-A driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
    bus-ID: 07:00.1
  Device-2: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK PRIME B450M-A
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 07:00.6
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.18.16-200.fc36.x86_64 running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.56 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    vendor: ASUSTeK PRIME B450M-A driver: r8169 v: kernel port: f000
    bus-ID: 05:00.0
  IF: enp5s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Cambridge Silicon Radio Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode) type: USB
    driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-6:3
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 3.64 TiB used: 1.79 TiB (49.1%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST2000DM008-2FR102 size: 1.82 TiB
  ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Toshiba model: External USB 3.0
    size: 1.82 TiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 118.01 GiB used: 14.3 GiB (12.1%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda5
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 499 MiB used: 14.4 MiB (2.9%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: N/A mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 38.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 638 Uptime: 1h 57m Memory: 13.58 GiB used: 3.91 GiB (28.8%)
  Init: systemd target: graphical (5) Compilers: gcc: 12.1.1 Packages: N/A
  note: see --pkg Shell: Bash v: 5.1.16 inxi: 3.3.19

note - it says
Desktop: GNOME v: 42.3.1 but i am in awesome wm at the moment.

Has anyone got any ideas? (I’m from the UK)

I’ve simple installed awesome, bspwm, i3 and am unable to run the ‘shift’ button from these distributions - but it all works fine in gnome. I’ve looked at the documentation and drawn a blank.
The closest I’ve got is: In Fedora, how do I select a proper Norwegian keyboard layout? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

But this seems now obsolete.

Can I use another button for shift? If so how can I do this.

If your tiling window managers are using X rather than Wayland, it might be worth trying
xkbcom gb

(in case you haven’t already). I am not familiar with a UK keyboard layout, is the shift key where it is on a US layout? If not, I would try hitting the key that usually works on a US keyboard.