$("#mytextbox").on("keypress", function(event) { // Disallow anything not matching the regex pattern (A to Z uppercase, a to z lowercase and white space) // For more on JavaScript Regular Expressions, look here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions var englishAlphabetAndWhiteSpace = /[A-Za-z ]/g; // Retrieving the key from the char code passed in event.which // For more info on even.which, look here: http://stackoverflow.com/q/3050984/114029 var key = String.fromCharCode(event.which); //alert(event.keyCode); // For the keyCodes, look here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/3781360/114029 // keyCode == 8 is backspace // keyCode == 37 is left arrow // keyCode == 39 is right arrow // englishAlphabetAndWhiteSpace.test(key) does the matching, that is, test the key just typed against the regex pattern if (event.keyCode == 8 || event.keyCode == 37 || event.keyCode == 39 || englishAlphabetAndWhiteSpace.test(key)) { return true; } // If we got this far, just return false because a disallowed key was typed. return false; }); $('#mytextbox').on("paste",function(e) { e.preventDefault(); });
<input id="mytextbox" style="width:300px" placeholder="Only English letters are allowed here...">