How to Type International Characters With a U.S. Keyboard (Part 3)

Do you miss writing international characters such as ñ or ü just because your computer has an U.S. keyboard? Do you have to use those pesky and awkward Alt-number combinations? Then this article series is for you. In the first article you set up your keyboard to more intuitively write international characters. The second article you learned how to use it. In this article you will understand some of its quirks and how to deal with them. Read on to learn how to type international characters with a U.S. keyboard.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer with Windows XP Professional
• You must have changed your keyboard behavior per our article "How to Type International Characters With a U.S. Keyboard (Part 1)."

1. Deal with the "Phantom Menace." To make this happen, you can perform these steps. Type one of the accent marks as described in Part 2 of this article series, such as an apostrophe: '. If nothing happens, either press the "Tab" key, or click elsewhere in your text. Type a vowel: a. The accented vowel á will show up where you typed your vowel, not your accent mark. The only key known to us to have this behavior is the Tab (or Shift-Tab) key. This behavior is unexpected for most people, and can make you feel out of control. What you would expect is that, once the cursor position changes, the accent mark would be omitted, instead of being carried around until a vowel or other character is typed later on. If you need to use tabs or the mouse to move elsewhere after typing an accent mark, you should type a space for the accent mark to show by itself, and then use backspace to erase it.

2. Type the Double Character. Type one of the accent marks as described in Part 2 of this article series, such as an apostrophe: '. If nothing happens type any character that is not a vowel: n. Both the accent mark and the character will show up. Like the Phantom Menace, the expected behavior would be to cancel the accent mark and simply show your character instead. Unlike the Phantom Menace, however, this Double Character is no more than a nuisance, and in fact you can use it to your advantage, as we have shown in Part 2: if you need to quote a phrase, simply type the quote character twice, move the cursor inside the pair, and simply start typing: 'this is a test', for instance. Obviously, you can do this with a normal keyboard. In fact, we encourage this practice as well with parentheses, bracked, and other paired punctuation. You can simply type a quote or apostrophe, and then start typing, too. Your quote or apostrophe and your characters will show up as expected.

3. These instances of unexpected behavior can wreak havoc when typing passwords that include such accent marks as regular characters. Because of dictionary attacks on passwords, users like you are more and more encouraged to include punctuation, change letter case, include numbers, and other tricks to avoid easily guessed passwords. However, these nuances with your new keyboard layout can deeply disturb the unwary, who does not understand why a carefully typed password does not work any more. For password issues, our tips will go a long way toward helping you understand and adjust your password typing to your new keyboard.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't be discouraged if you feel overwhelmed by these unexpected behaviors.
• Consider that you have gained the invaluable ability to type your accented characters pretty much the way you would with your native keyboard.
• Following our tips above will go a long way toward gaining command of this your new territory.