Spanish Accents
The nine characters written Spanish needs that an English keyboard does not have: á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ, ü, ¿ and ¡, each one a key you click to copy. Under every key is the keystroke for the platform you pick, macOS, Windows or Linux, and the table below adds the character's name, its Unicode codepoint and its HTML entity, so the page answers the person who wants the character now and the person who would rather stop needing a page at all. A case control switches the seven letters, with their keystrokes and their codepoints, to their capitals, which the two inverted marks do not have, and the type-here field takes a word typed without accents and puts the accent on the last plain letter you click. Everything runs in this page, so nothing is uploaded and there is no account.
Click a character to copy it. The keystroke under each key is for the platform you picked.
A key copies its character. With something in the field, the same click also puts the accent on the last plain a, e, i, o, u or n it finds, so cafe becomes café. When the accent belongs somewhere else in the word, as in mañana, copy the character and type it where it goes. Hold Alt and type the four digits on the numeric keypad with Num Lock on. The number row above the letters does not work. On a laptop with no keypad, switch the input to the United States international layout, where an apostrophe followed by the vowel gives the accent.
Worked examples
- café
- mamá
- español
Every character, with its keystrokes
The same nine characters the keys carry, in the case the control above is set to. The Windows column needs the numeric keypad with Num Lock on, and the Linux column is the United States international layout with AltGr.
| Character | Name | Codepoint | macOS | Windows alt code | Linux, US international |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| á | a with acute | U+00E1á | Option+E, then A | Alt+0225 | AltGr+A |
| é | e with acute | U+00E9é | Option+E, then E | Alt+0233 | AltGr+E |
| í | i with acute | U+00EDí | Option+E, then I | Alt+0237 | AltGr+I |
| ó | o with acute | U+00F3ó | Option+E, then O | Alt+0243 | AltGr+O |
| ú | u with acute | U+00FAú | Option+E, then U | Alt+0250 | AltGr+U |
| ñ | n with tilde | U+00F1ñ | Option+N, then N | Alt+0241 | AltGr+N |
| ü | u with diaeresis | U+00FCü | Option+U, then U | Alt+0252 | AltGr+Y |
| ¿ | inverted question mark | U+00BF¿ | Option+Shift+? | Alt+0191 | AltGr+Shift+? |
| ¡ | inverted exclamation mark | U+00A1¡ | Option+1 | Alt+0161 | AltGr+1 |
Common questions
- How do I type Spanish accents on Windows?
- Hold Alt and type the four digit code on the numeric keypad with Num Lock on: 0225 for á, 0233 for é, 0237 for í, 0243 for ó, 0250 for ú, 0241 for ñ, 0252 for ü, 0191 for ¿ and 0161 for ¡. The capitals have their own codes, 0193 for Á and 0209 for Ñ among them, and the table on this page switches to those when you set the case control to upper. The number row above the letters does not work for alt codes, so on a laptop with no keypad switch the input to the United States international layout, where an apostrophe followed by the vowel gives the accented letter.
- How do I type them on macOS and on Linux?
- On macOS the accent is a dead key: Option and E, let go, then the vowel, which gives á, é, í, ó and ú. Option and N then N gives ñ, Option and U then U gives ü, Option and Shift and ? gives ¿, and Option and 1 gives ¡. Hold Shift on the final letter for the capital. Holding a vowel key down also opens the accent picker. On Linux the column here is the United States international layout with AltGr: AltGr and A for á, AltGr and N for ñ, AltGr and Y for ü, which is the one people expect to be U, and AltGr and 1 for ¡. With a Compose key set up, Compose then an apostrophe then the vowel does the same, and Ctrl and Shift and U followed by the codepoint works in most GTK applications.
- When does Spanish put the two dots on the ü?
- In güe and güi, where the diaeresis says the u is pronounced instead of silent: vergüenza, pingüino, bilingüe, agüero. Without the two dots the u in gue and gui is only there to keep the g hard, as in guerra and guitarra, and it is not said. The mark appears nowhere else in Spanish, which is why this page carries one diaeresis character and five acutes.
- What are ¿ and ¡ for?
- They open a question or an exclamation so a reader knows the intonation from the first word rather than the last: ¿Cómo estás? and ¡Qué bien! Both ends are written, the inverted mark at the start of the part that is the question, the ordinary mark at the end. In a sentence that is only partly a question, the opening mark goes where the question begins: Si no puedes venir, ¿me avisas?
- Does clicking to copy work on a phone?
- Yes. A tap copies the character through the browser's clipboard, the same as a click. If a browser refuses the clipboard, the page says so and you can select the character out of the table instead. On a phone you also have the keyboard's own route: press and hold the plain letter, a, e, i, o, u or n, and the accented forms appear above your finger.
- Is anything uploaded?
- No. The characters, the keystrokes and the table are part of the page, so there is nothing to send anywhere and no account to make, and once the page has loaded it works with no connection. The only thing kept is the platform and the case you picked, in this browser, so the page opens the way you left it.
Every key copies the standard Unicode codepoint for that character and nothing else, so what lands in your clipboard is exactly what you clicked. The keystrokes are the documented sequences for each platform.