When writing in Spanish, you often need to type accented characters in words such as álamo, refunfuñar and vergüenza. Unfortunately, an American keyboard gives you no easy way to do so. Luckily, there is a standard way to put two keystrokes together to create the character you want. Here is a chart showing you what key combinations will get you the accented characters (these combinations work for Windows and GNU/Linux computers, for Macintoshes, see this section).
| Accent key | Accented letters | Resulting Character |
|---|---|---|
| ' | a,e,i,o,u | á,é,í,ó,ú |
| " | u | ü |
| ~ | n | ñ |
Exactly how you combine or "compose" these keys differs on different operating systems (Windows, Mac, etc.). Below are instructions for how to do so on school computers and on your computer at home.
Click on the blue “EN” icon on the right side of the start menu and select “ES” Spanish (International Sort). This changes the keyboard settings (for all programs) and sets Office programs to the Spanish spell check.
(If there is no blue icon, your computer hasn't yet been set up for proper use with Spanish. If you only want to use accents in Word, follow these instructions. Otherwise, see the Windows XP instructions below to set it up.)
Once your keyboard is in international mode, it will work in the following way:
When you press the APOSTROPHE (') key, QUOTATION MARK (") key, ACCENT GRAVE (`) key, TILDE (~) key, ACCENT CIRCUMFLEX key, or CARET (^) key, nothing appears on the screen until you press a second key. If you press one of the letters designated as eligible to receive an accent mark, the accented version of the letter appears. If you press the key of a character that is not eligible to receive an accent mark, two separate characters appear.
In other words, when you use the US-International keyboard layout, Windows automatically accents letters that customarily receive an accent but does not automatically accent letters that do not customarily receive an accent.
Once you are done working in Spanish, you should click on the icon again and change the default back to English, so as not to surprise the next student who uses the computer.
Instructions for setting up an "International Keyboard" in Windows XP
Note: If you don't want to take time to set up your computer and you only want to type accents in Word, follow these instructions.
On Windows, Word is automatically set up to type accents using the Control key as the "compose" key. For example, Control + ' + e will type a é
To type accents in programs other than Word, follow these instructions.
Note: To enable Spanish spell and grammar check, you need to make sure the language for your document is set to Spanish. To do so, select Tools->Language->Set Language.
If you cannot set the language to Spanish, it is a very good idea to turn off auto-correct, as this will incorrectly change Spanish words to incorrect English ones. To turn off auto-correct, select Tools->AutoCorrect Options, then uncheck Automatically use suggestions from the spelling checker.
On Macintosh, Option key is the default "compose" key in all applications. For example, typing Option + e + e will result in a é character.
| First press... | Then press | Resulting Character |
|---|---|---|
| Option + e | a,e,i,o,u | á,é,í,ó,ú |
| Option + u | u | ü |
| Option + n | n | ñ |
| Option + ? (i.e. Option + Shift + /) | ¿ |
Below are instructions for setting up accented characters on the two most popular desktop environments. If you don't use one of those environments, google for instructions on setting up "compose" or "deadkeys" in XWindows or Xorg (the basis of all graphical user interfaces in the GNU/Linux world).