Almost all applications support Spanish accents. Guidelines for typing and using accents are given below. lf you need to refer to additional characters, look under the Accents section.
See also the Minority Languages of Spain section and the Catalan page for additional information.
In Windows, combinations of the ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a non-English character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application. More detailed instructions about typing accents with ALT keys are available. Additional options for entering accents in Windows are also listed in the Accents section of this Web site.
| Vwl | ALT Code |
|---|---|
| Á | ALT+0193 |
| É | ALT+0201 |
| Í | ALT+0205 |
| Ó | ALT+0211 |
| Ú | ALT+0218 |
| Ñ | ALT+0209 |
| Ü | ALT+0220 |
| Vwl | ALT Code |
|---|---|
| á | ALT+0225 |
| é | ALT+0233 |
| í | ALT+0237 |
| ó | ALT+0243 |
| ú | ALT+0250 |
| ñ | ALT+0241 |
| ü | ALT+0252 |
| Sym | ALT Code |
|---|---|
| ¿ | ALT+0191 |
| ¡ | ALT+0161 |
| º | ALT+0186 (Masculine Ordinal) |
| ª | ALT+0170 (Feminine Ordinal) |
| « | ALT+0171 (Left Angle Quote) |
| » | ALT+0187 (Right Angle Quote) |
| € | ALT+0128 |
In order to use these codes you must activate the international keyboard. Instructions are listed in the Keyboards section of this Web site.
| Character | Description |
|---|---|
| Acute Accent (e.g.Ó) | ('+V) - Type apostrophe (singe quote), then the vowel. |
| Ñ,ñ | Type SHIFT+~, then either lowercase n or capital N. |
| Ü, ü | ("+V) - Type apostrophe (singe quote), then lowercase or capital U. |
| ¿ | RightAlt+? (You must use the Alt key on the Right) |
| ¡ | RightAlt+1 |
| «, » | RightAlt+[ |
| € | Control+RightAlt+5 |
If you wish to simulate a non U.S. keyboard, follow the instructions for Activating Keyboard Locales to activate and switch Microsoft keyboards.
| Character | Description |
|---|---|
| Acute Accent (e.g.Ó) | Type Option+E, then the vowel. For instance, to type á hold down Option+E, then type lowercase A. To type Á, hold down Option+E, then type capital A. |
| Ñ,ñ | Type Option+N, then either lowercase N for ñ or capital N for Ñ. |
| Ü, ü | Type Option+U, then either lowercase U for ü or capital U for Ü. |
| ¿ | Shift+Option+? |
| ¡ | Option+1 |
| º, ª | Option+0 (Masculine Ordinal Number Marker) |
| «, » | Option+\ |
| € | Shift+Option+2 (may not work for older System 9 fonts) |
These are the codes which allow browsers and screen readers to process data as the appropriate language. All letters in codes are lower case.
See Using Encoding and Language Codes for more information on the meaning and implementation of these codes.
Use these codes to input accented letters in HTML. For instance, if you want to type señor you would type señor.
The numbers in parentheses are the numeric codes assigned in Unicode encoding. For instance, because ñ is number 241, señor can also be used to input señor. These numbers are also used with the Windows Alt codes listed above.
| Vwl | Entity Code |
|---|---|
| Á | Á (193) |
| É | É (201) |
| Í | Í (205) |
| Ó | Ó (211) |
| Ú | Ú (218) |
| Ñ | Ñ (209) |
| Ü | Ü (220) |
| Vwl | Entity Code |
|---|---|
| á | á (225) |
| é | é (233) |
| í | í(237) |
| ó | ó (243) |
| ú | ú (250) |
| ñ | ñ (241) |
| ü | ü (252) |
| Sym | Entity Code |
|---|---|
| ¿ | ¿ (191) |
| ¡ | ¡ (161) |
| º | º (186) |
| ª | ª (170) |
| « | « (171) |
| » | » (187) | ‹ | ‹ |
| › | › |
| € | € |
Note: Older browsers may not the suport single angle codes (‹ / › for ‹ and ›).
Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to U.S. settings and not display the text properly.
To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file, then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8 as the encoding.
Generic Encoding Template
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=??? ">
...
<head>Declare Unicode
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>
The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag if you are using XHTML
Declare Unicode in XHTML
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>
If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also, older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly without the "utf-8" declaration.
Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are metadata tags which indicate the language of a page, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
There are a variety of minority languages spoken in Spain. In most cases, they use the same accented letters as Spanish, but each has its own language code. Below is some information about each language and the language code used to designate the language of a passage.
A non-related language spoken in the border between France and Spain. The language code is eu. For instance, the phrase bi etxe zuri 'two white houses' would be rendered in HTML as <i lang="eu">bu exte zuri</i>.
Romance language related to Spanish and Catalan spoken in the northern province of Aragon in the Pyrynees. The language code is an.
Romance language related to Spanish and Portuguese spoken in Northwestern Spain in Asturias on the cast. The language code is au .
See the Catalan page for more information.
Romance language related to Spanish and Portuguese spoken on the northwestern portion of Spain north of Portugal. The language code is gl .
A form of Spanish as spoken by the medieval Jewish community. Most Ladino speakers were expelled from Spain in the late 1490s, but settled elsewhere.
Most content in Spanish.
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