How to use Spanish characters on an English keyboard.
You can go directly to the MS instructions here but if you have trouble (like I did) these much more detailed instructions are intended to help you.
In our community of LA Peñita in Mexico special characters are particularly useful because penita is the diminutive of pena (pain) whereas peñita is the diminutive of peña (rock or crag). So if you would like to stop referring to our little corner of paradise as a “little sadness” then this is for you. There are lots of other good reasons like the difference between año and ano.
The most useful characters are ñ, í, é, ¿ and ¡. The problem is how to enter them on a standard North American keyboard. There are a number of ways to do it. The easiest to remember but a bit difficult to set up is described here. It requires only one key stroke for each character while holding the ALT key.
Unfortunately this procedure is operating system dependent. Following are very detailed instructions for XP, Windows 7 and Vista.
First go to one of these pages. Then come back here to learn how to use your newly installed keyboard options.
How to install US International Keyboard for Windows 7 and Vista
How to install US International Keyboard for XP
Now that you have installed your international Keyboard you need to learn to use it.
Open your text editor or email.
Click your tiny keyboard icon and make sure it is set to the United Sates – International keyboard.
Hold down the ALT key to the right of your space bar and strike letter n and you should get ñ. Try the same with e and i and 1 and /. Congratulations!!!
All the characters available to you are listed on this page.
CAUTION: The function of your keyboard has changed a little bit. For example when you strike the single or double quote nothing happens until you strike the next key. To get a quote you can follow it by a space. OR you can use the tiny keyboard icon to change back to the standard keyboard.
CAUTION: Some programs change the keyboard setting so you may occasionally have to use the tiny keyboard icon to set it back to international. I have not figured out which programs do it but occasionally the special characters just stop working but it is always easily repaired by clicking the tiny keyboard icon.
Very helpful. I really appreciate this tip. Thank you so much.
I kept losing my little slips of paper that I write the keyboard codes and tips on, so I finally came up with a solution that works for me, at least for the few times I need the ñ or an accented letter. I made up a short document on the simplest word editor on my computer, which consists of a string of text that contains the accented letters.
á é É í ó ú ¿ ñ Ñ
When I need a letter, I just open the document which is on my desktop, and copy and paste in the letter I need.
Thanks for all this, Johan.
As you say, much depends on the user’s operating system. For Apple Peeps, the process is very simple and no modifications are needed. I type the word La Peñita so often, this has become second nature.
…type Pe as usual, then hold the alt key and type n, then release the alt key and type n again, then keep typing ita.
Tom