Accents and diacriticals on your computer

 The following are instructions for different methods to input accents and other diacritical marks easily on your computer.

Accents in Windows 95, 98, ME (all applications)

From the Start Menu, go to Settings and choose Control Panel. Double-click on Keyboard and go to the Language tab. There should only be English-United States listed there. Highlight that and press Properties. From the drop-down menu, select "United States-International" and have your original Win9x CD handy, because it is going to ask for it. Press OK and you are set to go.

Once you do this, what you will get is a small blue box with "En" written on it sitting in the system tray (the space with little icons bottom right, just by the clock). You click on that and you will get a pop-up menu. Select "English (International)" there, and the keyboard layout will have changed so that all the accent keys now will be dead keys. This means that in order to get an accented character, you just press the accent key (apostrophe), release it and then the vowel (for ñ press ~ + n; for ¡ right ALT and 1; for ¿ right ALT and /). You can come back to the original layout by repeating the process and selecting "English (United States)" any time.

Accents in Windows XP (all applications)

From the Start Menu, open the Control Panel, double-click on Regional and Language Options, go to the Languages tab there. Choose Details and there click on Add, in Layout look for "United States-International." Then go to Language Bar Settings and uncheck "Turn off advanced text services" in order to get the selection icon in the system tray as explained above. Follow the Windows 95, 98, and ME instructions in order to enter accented and special characters.

Accents in Macintosh

An input method that works in all applications in a Mac is the following: for accent press Option + e, then the letter you want the accent on. For the ~ diacritical (as in Spanish ñ and Portuguese nasal vowels), Option + n and the letter. For ¿ Option + Shift + / and for ¡ Option + 1.