Maximum Productivity
with Minimum Effort
Typing Spanish Accents and Punctuation
Using the International Keyboard in Mac OS X
Introduction
About Sprout
I am such an incorrigible geek I write training
materials like this just for fun.
You may use this document for anything, photocopy
it as many times as you like and freely distribute it
as long as my name and contact information are
on it so I get credit for its brilliance and beauty.
I’ve written professionally for over fifteen years.
Early in my career, I added design work and
technical writing to my repertoire. That led to
a corporate training and “instructional design”
which includes producing training videos.
Follow these instructions to set-up your
international keyboard in Mac OS X. You need
do this only once. After that, you only need
to toggle between the English and Spanish
keyboards with a simple keystroke or click.
I have several expired certifications from
MicroSoft, Adobe, and Macromedia.
I’ve found typing with proper accents and
punctuation impresses native spanish speaking
pen pals. Many students of Spanish want to type
correctly but don’t know how. In the future, I’ll
create instructions for using the ASCII (or ALT)
method of typing and setting up the “international
keyboard” in Windows. For Mac users, this is far
easier than for our Windows friends.
At present, I am the most talented and best
looking member of the Little Caesars National
Training team at world headquarters in beautiful
Detroit, Michigan.
I’ve been teaching myself Spanish, which was a
slow process until we began translating all our
learning materials to Spanish.
¿Preguntas?
email me: [email protected]
1.
Open System Preferences*
any way you like and click
International.
*Try your dock or Apple menu.
International Preferences has three “tabs”:
• Language
• Formats
• Input Menu
Our first stop is under Language. We need
to add Spanish to our List of Languages.
Click Edit List.
English should already be selected.
Scroll down and select Español.
Click OK.
You’ll likely want to drag English back
to the top of your Languages List. Just
click and drag. The cursor will change
into a hand and fist.
Click Input Menu:
To toggle between the English and Spanish
keyboard you can either use a keyboard shortcut
or add a menu to your menu bar. I suggest either
the latter or both.
Having the menu makes it easy to open the
Keyboard Viewer which I find invaluable (more
about that soon).
Select Keyboard Viewer. Scroll to select Spanish
ISO and U.S. This adds those languages to the
keyboard viewer (see next page).
Select Show input menu in menu bar.
Input Menu Shortcuts
If you prefer using shortcuts you can use them but
I would advise changing them from the default.
Why? I have three children including two toddlers
who loved to bang on the keyboard were somehow
always changing the keyboard to Spanish which I
wouldn’t realize until I’d try typing a semi-colon or
something. Eventually, I noticed the shortcut was
CommandSpace and those two buttons are close
enough for even a tiny fist to hit simultaneously.
Input Source Options
This feature is at once brilliantly awesome and
infuriating. You have two choices:
• Use one input source in all documents:
Straightforward enough − you turn on the
Spanish keyboard and it stays on for all your
documents in all your applications until you turn it off.
• All a different input source for each document: You’re doing your
Spanish homework in MicroSoft Word and turn on the Spanish keyboard.
Switch over to your favorite instant message client and you’re back to typing
in English. Cool, huh? If you want to type in Spanish in more than one app,
you have to turn it on for each app. Insanely awesome until you forget it’s
on and you have to manual switch it on and off. If you’re like me, you’ll try
it but eventually switch it back to the default.
Quit System Preferences. You should see a U.S.
flag on the menu bar in the upper right of your
screen. That’s your input menu.
Choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the Input Menu.
Type a few words and you’ll notice the little keys light up when you
do. You’ll also notice when you hold down Shift the keyboard layout
changes, showing you what each key then represents.
Choose Spanish - ISO from the Input Menu.
The Keyboard Viewer changes just a wee bit. In particular, notice a couple keys
highlighted in orange, the ñ replacing your colon/semi-colon key and the upsidedown exclamation point where your plus and equal-sign key used to be.
To type, you’ll use your right pinky to press the accent key between the ñ and the
Return key followed by the normal “a” key. Ta-da! You should have just typed á.
Let’s try another. Press that same accent key followed by “e” and you should get é.
I’ll bet you’ve memorized it already.
“How do I type a colon or quotation marks?!” Turn the page.
Hold down Shift. Your quotation marks are “above” the number two, your exclamation
mark is right where it should be, and your regular (and upside-down) question marks
are in the upper right. That last bit takes some getting used to but not as much as your
parentheses sliding over one key.
Typing É is effectively the same as é, you just press Shift to make it uppercase.
Choose U.S. from your Input Menu at any time
to switch back to the English keyboard.
If you ever want to change your settings
(shortcuts or difference sources for different
documents por ejemplo, simply choose Open
International from the Input Menu.
Other Resources:
Typing with the accents and punctuation in place really impresses the native spanish speakers I write to.
I also know that many students of spanish want to type correctly and don’t know how. Here is a list of
pages that give instructions on how to type using the ALT method and/or setting up an “international”
keyboard in Windows:
http://www.studyspanish.com/accents/typing.htm
http://www.lingolex.com/keyboard.htm
http://users.ipfw.edu/JEHLE/courses/ascaccnt.htm
Lingolex also has a page just for the ALT method (aka ASCII):
http://www.lingolex.com/spanishascii.htm
This page, at the wonderful spanish.about.com site, explains several different methods including (but no
less difficult or frustrating) the ALT method:
http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa031599.htm
This page provides the ALT codes, links to articles about international keyboards for both Windows and
Mac (I’ve already created this for you here) and the HTML codes for Spanish accented characters &
other punctuation:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/spanish.html
Their international keyboard How-to’s are found here:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/keyboards/index.html
A well meaning but tedious-to-use tool is found here:
http://spanish.typeit.org
You type in your text as normal but click buttons to insert each accented character or upside-down
exclamation point/question mark.
This document made with love using SnapzPro X, InDesign
CS3, Photoshop CS2, and dual G5 PowerMac using Tiger and
5 ½ (count ‘em five and a half) GB of RAM.
Many students and speakers of Spanish want to type correctly but don’t know how. I’ve found typing with proper
accents and punctuation impresses native Spanish speaking pen pals and shows both courtesy and respect.
Activating the U.S. – International Keyboard in Windows
1. Open the Control Panel by clicking Start > Settings > Control Panel.
The Control Panel window opens.
2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
The Regional and Language Options window opens.
3. Click the Languages tab.
4. Under Text services and input languages, click Details.
The Text services and input languages window opens.
5. Notice in the Installed services section US is listed under Keyboard. Click Add.
The Add Input Language window opens.
6. Scroll down, select United States - International and click OK.
The Add Input Language window closes.
7. In the Preferences section of the Text Services and Input Languages window, click Language Bar.
The Language Bar Settings window opens.
8. Select Show the Language bar on the desktop if desired and click OK.
The Language Bar Settings window closes.
9. In the Text services and input languages window, under the Preferences section, click Key Settings.
The Advanced Key Settings window opens.
10. Here you can learn and/or change the Hot keys for input languages.
If you prefer shortcuts to menus – this is your window.
11. Click OK in the Text services and input languages window.
The Text services and input languages window closes. You should also notice a small keyboard just left of the
Notification Area of the Task Bar – that’s your new Language menu.
Using the U.S. – International Keyboard
After choosing United States – International from the Language menu, use the following directions for typing special
characters (and how to type “regular” characters).