Entering special characters: á,é,í,ó,ú,ñ, etc.

[mrcqm]

This is something I found very helpful on the Mac and figured I'd share it here in case someone else needs it and doesn't know how to do it.

I frequently need to type Spanish language words. So how do I do this using the English keyboard layout? Well I've found two really simple ways. The first way I found was to use the character palette. Click on your desktop to make your top-of-the-screen menu bar point to "Finder". Choose Edit > Special Characters. The search field is great or you can look through the various categories. Hint: If you select View: All Characters (at the top of the palette) you'll have far more options. ⌘⌥⌦⏏ etc. are all found under "technical symbols" just as an example.

Accented characters have keystrokes. In just playing around with different keys, here's what I've found. For á,é,í,ó,ú you type option e then the vowel you need (alone / no option). For ñ or any other letter which requires a tilde over it, press option n then the letter (i.e. option n then n alone for ñ). For ? you press shift / of course; if you add the option key to that combination you get ¿. Option / gives you ÷. Option 1 gives you ¡. Option [ gives you “; add a shift in there and you get ”. Option u then u alone gives you ü.

These are the most important ones I've found. There are lots of others though.