Using the spanish keyboard in Windows (2)

Following on from yesterday's post, here is a spanish keyboard map:



A larger, printable version of the keyboard can be found here - print it out and keep it near your keyboard. I found it really useful writing up my notes from classes using the spanish keyboard, and it doesn't take long to get used to using the accents, brackets etc.

Here's an explanation of how it works:

In the diagram, the small (red) characters at the top left of each key is the symbol you will find on the PC's key itself. The larger (blue) character shown on the key in the diagram will be shown on the PC's screen when that key is pressed.

Here, the Q key, at the top left of the keyboard, will produce the letter q and the key that is marked ; will produce ñ.

Normally holding down the Shift key when a key is pressed will produce a capital letter, in the two example mentioned Q and Ñ. (The Shift keys are coloured yellow in the diagram.) When this is not the case the shifted form is shown in the diagram (in black) above the "normal" character. For example, if the shift is held down when the digit 5 key is pressed the % will be displayed on the PC's screen. Another example is the = key which will produce the characters ¡ and ¿.

In some cases you have to press two keys consecutively to generate an accented letter. We have already seen that, when we have selected the Spanish keyboard, by pressing the ; key we generate a ñ. If you want to include a é while using the Spanish keyboard you will have to press the ' key and then the e key. In the diagrams keys used in this way to generate accents are shown in purple.

Some keys can generate more than two characters. The additional characters are shown in green in the diagrams. An example on the Spanish layout is the key marked 6. This produces a 6 or, if you use the shift key, the & character. If you hold down the Alt Gr key (which is to the right of the space bar and is coloured pink in the diagram) when pressing the key you will produced the ¬ character. Another example is the # key. This can be used as normal to produce ç and Ç. It can also be used with Alt Gr to produce the { symbol.