# European Dopers: a question for you...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 10, 2000, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820 "2000-08-10T12:37:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/1 "2000-08-10T12:37:07Z")
Here in the US, we use a 26-letter alphabet: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvxwyz. We don’t use diacritical marks such as a cedilla, tilde, circumflex, umlaut, or macron, unless it’s a foreign-origin word, like resumé.
My question: do you have special keys set aside to type letters with these marks. Or do you have to type a special sequence to generate these characters.
Also, how’s your keyboard layed out? The typical US keyboard has the letters layed out thusly:
```auto
Q W E R T Y U I O P
A S D F G H J K L
Z X C V B N M
```
---
### Author:  [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/2 "2000-08-10T12:59:39Z")
Our keyboards are the same, QWERTY layout. The Dutch language does use a trema in some words, which is accomplished by, e.g., first pressing " and then e, producing ë.
Same for French “accents”:
’ + e = é
` + e = è
Some more:
ALT + s = ß
~ + n = ñ
Et cetera. My question: I can do all this with my keyboard at work, but my home computer doesn’t do it. What settings do I need to change at home? Winblows 98.
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### Author:  [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/3 "2000-08-10T13:09:39Z")
We have a fáda which is used to change the sound of a letter.
Fáda sounds like foda.
The keyboard is qwerty.
I do notice that some of the characters are on different keys on American keyboards eg. the " and the @ sometimes swap places .
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### Author:  [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/4 "2000-08-10T13:25:07Z")
Yojimbo, my girlfriend computer has that too, but I think that’s an IBM thing. Terrible to work with.
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### Author:  [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/5 "2000-08-10T13:45:07Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by yojimbo \*
> **I do notice that some of the characters are on different keys on American keyboards eg. the " and the @ sometimes swap places.**
That was because in the good old days before personal computers, the characters were mapped like this on typewriters for numbers:
```auto
Shift: ! " # $ % & ' ( )
Unshifted: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
(zero had no upper case character)
```
When they assigned ASCII codes, these shifted characters got codes 33 - 41. Other characters like ^, @, ~, \*, and ` got whatever odd numbers assignments were left.
Then as computer programming took off, it was noticed that @, \*, and ^ were used a lot more often. So they got moved onto the number keys’ upper case, thus displacing " and ', and moving 6, 7, 8, and 9’s upper case to 7, 8, 9, and 0.
Of course, ASCII being already established, the codes were left alone.
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### Author:  [@TwistofFate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TwistofFate)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/6 "2000-08-10T15:03:59Z")
another Ireland in here
on recent keyboards here we have
! " £ $ % ^ & \* ( )
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
we have the £ and the $ symbol.
we produce our fada’s on the keyboard by pressing the CTL, ALT and the appropriate vowel. very recent keyboards now come with the Euro symbol loaded too.
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/7 "2000-08-10T19:30:15Z")
Spanish keyboards have an extra key at the end of the third row for the n with a tilde. The @ sign and some of the other punctuation marks are in strange places. Otherwise it’s the standard QWERTY setup; I think accent marks are produced by some combination of the Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys, but I never did learn how to do it. I’m sure Lawrence could tell you more if he’s still around.
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### Author:  [@Landsknecht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Landsknecht)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2000, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-dopers-a-question-for-you/28820/8 "2000-08-10T20:44:08Z")
Here at work, we’ve seen laptops from some of our European offices that have come in to be worked on. I worked on one from the netherlands, and one of my co-workers got a German one. The keyboard layouts are very similar, but there’s a few extra characters that are accesed by using a cntr + \ combination. The really fun part with those machines was trying to navigate the Dutch and German versions of Windows. 🙂