# Typing in spanish **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 17, 2004, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603 "2004-10-17T01:01:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dauerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c2a13f/32.png) [@dauerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dauerbach)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/1 "2004-10-17T01:01:19Z")
What is the easiest way for me to be able to type and use Spanish accents, special characters such as the upside down “?”, etc? ---
**Author:** ![chula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a4c791/32.png) [@chula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chula)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/2 "2004-10-17T01:09:48Z")
In Word, I usually use Ctrl + ’ then the vowel I want to put the accent on. For upsidedown ? and ! I use “insert symbol”. There is a way to do it using Alt + a number, which I’m sure someone will share soon enough. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/3 "2004-10-17T03:37:50Z")
Such as [¡ ásçìï çöðès for Special Characters using PCs!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=959) this thread? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/4 "2004-10-17T03:43:37Z")
From the above link: Á Alt+0193 uppercase “a” acute á Alt+0225 lowercase “a” acute é Alt+0233 lowercase “e” acute É Alt+0201 uppercase “e” acute í Alt+0237 lowercase “i” acute Í Alt+0205 uppercase “i” acute ó Alt+0243 lowercase “o” acute Ó Alt+0211 uppercase “o” acute ú Alt+0250 lowercase “u” acute Ú Alt+0218 uppercase “u” acute ñ Alt+0241 lowercase “n” tilde Ñ Alt+0209 uppercase “n” tilde ¡ Alt+0161 inverted exclamation point ¿ Alt+0191 inverted question mark « Alt+0171 left double angle quote » Alt+0187 right double angle quote ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/5 "2004-10-17T03:46:38Z")
> [@chula](#): > > In Word, I usually use Ctrl + ’ then the vowel I want to put the accent on. For upsidedown ? and ! I use “insert symbol”. There is a way to do it using Alt + a number, which I’m sure someone will share soon enough. If you have ‘Insert Symbol’ showing, it will tell you the shortcut for any symbol you select next to “shortcut key” at the bottom. You can also look up the ASCII character code there. ¿ is Alt+Ctrl+? in Word, Alt+0191 in ASCII (press Alt, then enter 0191 in the numeric keypad) ¡ is Alt+Ctrl+! in Word, Alt+0161 in ASCII ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/6 "2004-10-17T04:10:50Z")
All of this is nice, but unnecessarily complicated. In XP, go to the Regional and Language Settings control panel. Select the Languages tab, and click on Details… on the top right of that window. The Text Services and Input Languages window will open. Under Installed Services on the Settings tab, click on Add… . In the resulting window, select English (US) as the input language and “United States - International” as the Keyboard Layout / IME. Hit OK, then select English (US) - United States International as your default input language, then hit OK all the way back out. Other Windows versions let you do the same, but the control panel is in a different spot. This turns certain keys on your keyboard into modifiers. Left-Alt turns into AltGr, which lets you access certain characters easily (like ¿¡, ñ, ¶, ¬, «», and many others) and turns your quote, caret, and tilde keys into combining keys. Hit " and A separately, and it combines into Ä. ’ and A turn into Á, ` + A = À, ’ + C = ç. This is by far the easiest way for a US keyboard to access the extended Latin alphabet. All special letters used by Romance languages can be typed with the combining method, and using the AltGr key will get you the rest of the stuff you need to type in Swedish, Norwegian, or Icelandic. ---
**Author:** ![Roches](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc8723/32.png) [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/7 "2004-10-17T09:11:32Z")
US International also ends up being inconvenient if you want to type quotation marks – you have to press the space bar afterwards or you get an accented character. I thought it could do å and ø, though. I’m not sure about þ and ð. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/8 "2004-10-17T14:36:17Z")
> [@Roches](#): > > US International also ends up being inconvenient if you want to type quotation marks – you have to press the space bar afterwards or you get an accented character. I thought it could do å and ø, though. I’m not sure about þ and ð. Not necessarily. You needn’t hit the space bar unless you’re using the quote keys with a potentially accented character. I mean to say, " + N just comes out as "N. You only need hit the spacebar if you need to type a quote mark followed by a vowel. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2004, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/9 "2004-10-17T14:44:35Z")
Oh, and the [diagram](http://www.csus.edu/fl/keyboard.html), as promised. As you can see, **Roches** , it can do the thorn, the eth, the slashed o, and the å (whose name escapes me) with the AltGr key. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/10 "2004-10-18T15:17:29Z")
> [@Bambi Hassenpfeffer](#): > > [the above] …turns certain keys on your keyboard into modifiers. Left-Alt turns into AltGr, which lets you access certain characters easily (like ¿¡, ñ, ¶, ¬, «», and many others) and turns your quote, caret, and tilde keys into combining keys. Hit " and A separately, and it combines into Ä. ’ and A turn into Á, ` + A = À, ’ + C = ç. This is by far the easiest way for a US keyboard to access the extended Latin alphabet. All special letters used by Romance languages can be typed with the combining method, and using the AltGr key will get you the rest of the stuff you need to type in Swedish, Norwegian, or Icelandic. Wow! This is cool. It’s finally just as easy to type this in Windows as it’s always been on my beloved Macs. Luckily, though, on my work machine, it’s the _right_-Alt, not the left alt (which I used all the time for keyboard shortcuts; I’m a lefty). _ **However** _: is there a way to turn off the “helpful” abilty to auto-complete? It’s annoying as hell to try to type single- and double-quotes, these ~ things, and these ` things. I’m one of those people that actually _look_ at the screen while they’re typing, so when something I type doesn’t show up on the screen, I stop all of a sudden and get annoyed (I’m not used to the behavior yet?). ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/typing-in-spanish/269603/11 "2004-10-18T16:44:58Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Wow! This is cool. It’s finally just as easy to type this in Windows as it’s always been on my beloved Macs. Luckily, though, on my work machine, it’s the _right_-Alt, not the left alt (which I used all the time for keyboard shortcuts; I’m a lefty). Yeah, I meant Right Alt. I was in a rush when I typed that. > [@](#): > > _ **However** _: is there a way to turn off the “helpful” abilty to auto-complete? It’s annoying as hell to try to type single- and double-quotes, these ~ things, and these ` things. I’m one of those people that actually _look_ at the screen while they’re typing, so when something I type doesn’t show up on the screen, I stop all of a sudden and get annoyed (I’m not used to the behavior yet?). I think it’s a question of getting accustomed to it. If you’re going to type a ’ or " followed by one of the vowels (or the letter “c”, in the case of '), then you need to hit the spacebar. If it’s before a consonant, you needn’t do anything. See, ’ + a = á, but ’ [space] + a = 'a, while ’ + n = 'n. It’s just getting used to it – in fact, I’m so accustomed to it that I wish I could make my iBook and the PCs at school do this – I like this input method better than the one on the iBook. To me, Option-E + vowel is harder to remember than ’ + vowel. I’m taking a Spanish class this semester, so easily accessing á, é, í, ó, ú, and ñ (and ¡ and ¿) are important. When I type in German, having ä, ö, ü, and ß around is also nice. One thing I do for quotes is to type both up front and hit the left arrow to put text between them. Since the quotes don’t combine with each other, you get “”, and then can input the text between them easily. I even catch myself doing this on other types of keyboards.