I've got all of the other letters under control. How do you make the accented "e" when typing on the computer? Oh, what about the upside down exclamation point, too?

Hello Carole,

About.com has just the right guide for you.
It is called " Typing Spanish Accents and Punctuation ". This guide gives instructions for typing Spanish accents for Windows and Macintosh's. You can print out the instructions and tape them to your monitor for easy reference. Gerald Erichsen is the on-line guide person to the Spanish language for About.com

Goodluck!

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: MadridMan ]

Hola Carole,
If you have a Windows pc hit the alt key and use you right hand numbers keypad and type 130 while holding down the ALT key and voilá, la é, for the question mark try ALT + 168, ¿

A nice person from this board shared this information with me not too long ago and since I have been wowing my Spanish mother when I send her e-mails with the correct punctuation, she can't believe that I remember my accents!

Booklady

BTW: The ¡ is ALT+173...and the É is ALT+144 (just in case you want CAPS). An easy way to (even though the Real Academia doesn't require it) accent capital letters is to use the "font" option in Word, highlighting your text, and selecting "all caps"...it will keep the accent while capitalizing your letters...

Thanks! Why couldn't I figure out 1 3 0!! But the exclamation point, please?

I posted this in another forum (I can't remember where!), but in Windows it's possible to have a virtual Spanish keyboard set up along with your usual one. You can switch between them with a single mouse click. An accented letter is just ' before the vowel,
é,í,ó etc. ¡ is just the = key.

El Boqueron and others, ummm.. :o .. I think I inadvertantly DELETED the thread about which you are referring. I found it, was in the process of transferring it to this "new" forum, and then it was gone. Not sure what happened. Maybe it still exists, but couldn't find it with a couple searches of the entire message board. Gulp! Sorry.

Upside down exclamation point: ALT+173= ¡
(remember, on a PC keyboard the NUM LOCK key must be activated to use the number keypad on the right side of your keyboard). When in Spain, it's faster for me to use this method rather than find, use the accented characters on the Spanish keyboard. And it still works!

The exclamation mark: ALT + 0161 y ¡ya está!
Tia

Ooops! My answer wasn´t as speedy as yours, MM. How come that we use different codes by the way? Does it depend on the different (American or Swedish) keyboard settings?

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: Tia ]

That is curious, Tia. I've never seen 4-digit codes, but your ALT+0161 works too for me to make the "¡", just one extra digit it seems. Try mine on your keyboard and see if it works.

Ah, those pearls of wisdom lost forever down some electronic waste pipe! Nevermind - if anyone wants to use the Spanish keyboard method but doesn't know how to set it up, let me know. The main advantage (at least for my feeble brain) is lower memory load - you don't have to remember all those arbitrary ALT sequences.