Accents & Symbols

How do I type accent marks and special symbols in Spanish?

There are several different ways you can do this:

• Copy/paste the characters from the course into a file (this is what I do).
• In the "Write It!" section, there is an icon in the form of a keyboard - when you select it, a keyboard is displayed which allows you to select the accented characters.
• You can add the Spanish keyboard configuration to your OS (I personally don't want to learn another keyboard layout).
• There are also different control characters you can type (which ones to use will depend on your operating system).

I changed my keyboard to US International-PC. Now I can type accented vowels by first pressing ' then the vowel. The tilde is made by holding down the option key and typing n. Leading exclamation points: option+!. ¿: Hold option+shift and type ?. The only problem it causes when typing English is if you mean to type a word with an apostrophe that is immediately followed by a vowel it will think you want to accent the letter. You just have to remember to hit space first in this unusual circumstance. After have done this for a long time I can type accented characters pretty quickly.

Setting the keyboard to US International for the PC is definitely the way to go if you can do this. But if you want to use a different keyboard (like me), you can use AutoHotKeys (http://ahkscript.org/docs/Tutorial.htm#s12). The following script will allow you to use the windows special key in combination with the letter you wish to accent:

#?::
   Send, ¿
Return

#!::
   Send, ¡
Return

#i::
   Send, í
Return

#o::
   Send, ó
Return

#a::
   Send, á
Return

#u::
   Send, ú
Return

#n::
   Send, ñ
Return

#e::
   Send, é
Return

!A::
   Send, Á
Return

!I::
   Send, Í
Return

!U::
   Send, Ú
Return

!E:
   Send, É
Return

^u::
   Send, ü
Return

Ah, this is very useful... I was wondering the same thing, dhagstrom! Thanks for all of the info as well, Steven and Dan! 

George gave me a cheat sheet. I just follow them.